*^    %^ 


JOHN    O'DONOVAN. 

{Enlarged  f7'0in  an  Ivory  Miniature  by  Bernard  Mnlrcnan,  R.H.A.) 


A  Group  of 

Nation-Builders 

O'D  ONOVAN— O'CURRY— PETRTE 


BY 


Rev.   PATRICK  M.   MacSWEENEY 


O 


BOSTON  COLLEGE  LIBUAUY 
CHEST^IIT  iliLL,  MAm. 


B.    HERDER 

T7  SOUTH  BROADWAY,  ST.  LOUIS,  MO- 
CATHOLIC  TRUTH  SOCIETY  OF  IRELAND 

24    UPPER   O'CONNELL    STREET,    DUBLIN 
I9I3 


FOREWORD 

During  the  Nineteenth  Century  Ireland  fought 
along  three  great  lines  for  the  recovery  of  her 
freedom  as  a  nation.  She  fought  for  free  ownership 
of  the  land ;  she  fought  for  freedom  of  religion ; 
and  she  fought  for  the  freedom  of  her  intellectual 
life.  In  doing  so  she  was  unerringly  laying  the 
foundations  of  her  national  well-being.  In  her 
battles  she  has  had  her  heroes  :  and  it  is  well  that 
their  memories  should  7iot  be  allowed  to  die.  In 
the  battle  for  intellectual  freedom  it  is  true  to  say 
that  O'Donovan,  O'Curry,  and  Petrie  are  national 
heroes.  They  loved  Ireland  and  the  Irish  people 
with  a  lasting  love.  They  cherished  the  Past  of 
Ireland,  they  reverenced  it^  and  they  believed 
in  it.  They  determined  that  the  Ireland  of  the 
Future  should  be  bound  to  the  Ireland  of  the 
Past  by  the  strong  links  of  knowledge  and  of  love. 
They  forged  these  links  in  the  white-heat  of 
patriotic  research.  They  were,  in  every  true  sense 
of  the  word,  N ation-builders ;  and  we,  their 
heirs,  must  not  forget  them.  To  prevent  our  doing 
so  I  have  written  this  little  book,  and  to  their 
memories  I  dedicate  it. 

P.  M.  Macs. 

St  Patrick's  College,  Maynooth^ 
July,  1913. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER   I 

PAGE 

O'Donovan's  Early  Years        .  .  .  1 


CHAPTER   II 
His  Work  on  the  Survey         ...  9 

CHAPTER   III 

Influence  op  Petrie   on  O'Donovan  and 

O'CURBY        ....  .  .         18 

CHAPTER   IV 
Annals  of  the  Four  Masters  .  .       26 

CHAPTER   V 
Dublin,  Home  of  the  Revival  .  .        33 

CHAPTER    VI 
O'Curry's  Position  in  the  Irish  Revival       40 

CHAPTER   VII 
O'Curry's  Vast  Labours  on  Irish  Texts  .        S2 

CHAPTER   VIII 
O'CuRRY  IN  London  and  Oxford     .  .        60 


/  -O  fl  C 

^J».  V?  -O'  '*!-,'' 


IV  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER    IX 
Professor  in  the  Catholic  University     .        66 

CHAPTER   X 
George  Petrie,  the  Artist      ...        76 

CHAPTER   XI 
Pioneer  of  Irish  Archaeology  .  .        83 

CHAPTER   XII 
The  Essay  on  Tara    .....        96 

CHAPTER   XIII 
Pbtrie's  Work  on  the  Round  Towers     .      107 

CHAPTER  XIV 
Further  Arch^ological  Researches  .      120 

CHAPTER   XV 
The  Ancient  Music  of  Ireland  .         .132 


A  Group  of  Nation- Builders 

O'DONOVAN— O'CURRY—PETRIE 

CHAPTER   I 

o'donovan's  early  years 

The  life  of  a  nation  is  a  continuous  effort  at 
self-realisation.  As  the  individual  strives 
to  give  utterance  to  the  rising  thoughts 
within  him,  so  a  nation,  through  the  collec- 
tive mouthpiece  of  its  greatest  thinkers, 
strives  to  reveal  to  the  world  its  inner  self. 
Sometimes  the  attempt  is  but  a  partial 
success  appearing  in  fragmentary  scraps 
of  autobiography,  or  sometimes  it  seems 
almost  complete  in  the  union  in  one  great 
man  of  the  representative  qualities  of  his 
race.  The  theory  of  environment  as  a 
necessary  factor  in  the  appearance  from 
time  to  time  of  thoroughly  representative 
types  cannot  be  passed  over  in  the  case  of 
John  O'Donovan.  To  understand  him,  it 
is  necessary  to  grasp  intellectually  and 
imaginatively  the  past  from  which  he 
derives. 

This  strange,  idealising,  and  wandering 
race  of  ours  has  left  us  sufficient  traces  of 


2  A  GROUP  OF  NATION-BUILDERS 

its  past  to  reconstruct  that  homeland  of 
thought  which  was  to  be  the  birth-place  of 
O'Donovan.  Dwelling  in  an  island  ringed 
round  by  far-stretching  seas  whose  rock- 
petals,  like  a  rose,  are  washed  by  magic 
waves,  it  is  no  wonder  that  our  people  are 
stamped  with  something  of  the  mystery 
that  surrounds  their  island  home.  Its  every 
feature  has  been  brooded  over  in  imagina- 
tion by  them,  and  with  the  loving  tenderness 
of  a  mother  they  have  called  them  by  sweet- 
sounding  names.  The  shadow  in  the  glen, 
the  peak  piercing  the  sky,  the  gap  through 
which  the  sea-wind  blows,  the  head-land 
facing  the  wave,  the  river  fretting  the  rocky 
boulders  of  its  mountain  bed,  the  lonely 
bog  where  the  great  elk  sleeps  his  age-long 
sleep,  the  sand-dune  gleaming  white-faced 
with  its  necklet  of  ocean-foam  are  all  re- 
flected in  the  sensitive,  shimmering  imagina- 
tion of  the  Celt. 

Amidst  the  turmoil  of  tribal  war  and  the 
struggles  of  conflicting  races  Celtic  culture 
proceeded  on  its  way,  gathering  up  those 
elements  in  life  which  were  susceptible  of 
orderly  imaginative  treatment,  whether  it 
be  in  the  growth  of  Irish  art  from  the  simple 
treatment  of  the  La  T^ne  period,  or  the 
growth  of  Epic  Romance  from  the  earliest 
mythic  period  through  the  Tain  to  its 
dissolution  in  the  modern  "  sceal." 


o'donovan's  early  years  8 

This  culture  has  remained  remarkably  in- 
dependent of  external  influences.  The  one 
great  influence  which  modified  the  native 
culture  was  that  of  the  Church,  and  it  is  a 
commonplace  to  say  that  even  the  Church, 
potent  as  she  was  in  absorbing  the  interests 
of  the  best  intellects  in  Europe  in  her  cause, 
in  Ireland  found  the  stream  of  secular 
literature  flowing  side  by  side  with  her  own, 
and,  to  her  credit  be  it  said,  in  no  way 
impeded  it ;  but,  by  pruning  it  of  elements 
objectionable  to  her  teaching,  brought  about 
that  commingling  of  the  two  currents  which 
has  been  a  stumbling  block  to  some,  and  a 
cause  of  justifiable  pride  to  others. 

From  the  year  450  to  the  year  900  the 
early  literature  of  Ireland  took  shape,  and 
it  will  be  perhaps  a  surprise  to  some  to 
hear  that  its  final  gleaning  commenced 
when  the  Danish  and  Norse  influence  in 
Ireland  was  at  its  height.  As  German 
literature  received  a  new^  impetus  from 
the  threatened  domination  of  France,  so 
it  would  seem  as  if  Ireland  was  stimulated 
into  literary  activity  by  the  opposition  of 
the  Danes ;  just  as,  amidst  the  excitement 
of  the  Jacobite  struggle,  a  new  band  of 
poets  came  to  voice  her  national  claims  and 
ambitions. 

In  the  interval  between  the  compilation 
of   such   great   collections  as  the  Leabhar 


4  A   GROUP    OF   NATION-BUILDERS 

na  h'Uidhre  and  the  Book  of  Leinster  and 
the  outburst  of  popular  Jacobite  poetry, 
Irish  literature  suffered,  in  my  opinion, 
from  being  too  self-contained.  The  older 
motifs  became  played  out,  and  a  debased, 
rhetorical  style  began  to  supplant  the 
nervous  narrative  one  of  the  elder  epic. 
Making  all  allowance,  however,  for  the 
natural  decay  of  narrative  prose  literature, 
one  can  safely  say  that  Ireland  possesses  a 
body  of  early  epic  prose  which  is  without 
parallel  in  any  early  European  literature 
in  its  romantic  and  imaginative  breadth. 

Outside  of  pure  literature  the  years 
stretching  from  the  English  Invasion  to 
the  age  of  Keating  are  marked  by  a  rich 
stock  of  ecclesiastical,  topographical,  gene- 
alogical and  historical  literature ;  and  it 
was  this  that  O'Donovan,  whether  through 
the  bent  of  his  own  mind  or  the  influence 
of  others,  set  himself  to  reveal  to  a  public 
hitherto  totally  ignorant  of  it.  He  and 
O' Curry  had,  it  is  true,  all  the  familiarity 
of  native  speakers  with  the  usual 
traditional  versions  of  the  poems  of 
O'Rahilly,  Seaghan  Claireach,  Eoghan 
Ruadh  O'Sullivan,  Tadhg  Gaodhlach  and 
the  rest,  which  were  then  current  amongst 
the  peasantry  of  the  South  of  Ireland; 
but  the  unknown,  as  usual,  excited  their 
curiosity ;  it  was  superfluous  to  investigate 


O  DONOVAN  S   EARLY   YEARS  5 

works  that  were  as  household  words  amongst 
them.  It  was  left  to  a  later  age  and  move- 
ment, when  the  Famine  had  rendered  in- 
distinct the  memory  of  eighteenth-century 
lyric,  to  revive  the  fame  of  Eoghan  Ruadh 
and  bis  contemporaries.  Four  men  more  par- 
ticularly have  contributed  to  that  revival. 
O'Daly  and  Walsh  printed  a  considerable 
amount  of  Jacobite  poetry,  which  awakened 
interest  in  it  in  their  day.  Then  came  the 
beautiful  verse  translations  of  the  learned 
and  esteemed  President  of  the  National 
Literary  Society,  Dr.  Sigerson,  and  lastly 
there  is  the  work  of  Father  Dinneen. 

John  O'Donovan  was  born  at  Atateemore, 
in  the  County  of  Kilkenny,  in  the  year  1806, 
not  in  1809  as  he  himself  says.  The  correct 
date  is  proved  by  the  Baptismal  register 
quoted  by  Father  Carrigan  in  his  History  of 
the  Diocese  of  Ossory.  He  grew  up  therefore 
at  a  time  when  Ireland  was  awakening  to 
a  growing  sense  of  political  freedom.  The 
penal  days,  just  passing  away,  though  they 
had  destroyed  all  political  liberty  amongst 
the  native  Irish,  had  failed  to  crush  the 
spirit  of  domestic  joy  and  of  literary  eiffort 
amongst  the  peasantry.  A  first-hand  ac- 
quaintance with  native  Irish  literature  of 
the  eighteenth  century  and  earlier  nine- 
teenth will  show  how  much  of  real  intel- 
lectual life,  of  literary  aspiration,   and  of 


6  A  GROUP  OF  NATION-BUILDERS 

strong  religious  emotion  was  to  be  found 
amongst  a  people  who  up  to  this  had  been 
commonly  reputed  as  naught  but  hewers 
of  wood  and  drawers  of  water. 

In  the  sanded  kitchen  of  the  local  inn  or 
in  the  wide  ingle-nook  of  a  farmer's  house, 
where  the  fire  threw  weird  dancing  figures 
on  the  smoked  rafters,  would  be  heard  tales 
of  other  days  recalling  epic  figures  of  an 
heroic  past,  or  the  legends  of  the  patron 
saint  whose  well  stood  near,  or  the  im- 
promptu repartees  in  verse  bandied  between 
two  famous  local  "  files."  Nor  was  the 
travelling  schoolmaster  without  his  part  in 
the  life  of  the  time.  In  many  instances  he 
was  both  poet  and  schoolmaster,  the  latter 
by  necessity,  the  former  by  choice. 

With  the  growth  of  political  freedom  and 
the  establishment  of  Maynooth  (1795),  Latin 
Schools,  as  they  were  called,  became  more 
numerous,  and  helped  to  prepare  the  way 
for  the  collegiate  system  of  to-day.  The 
great  mass  of  the  Irish  Catholic  Clergy 
found  opportunities  at  home  for  education, 
and  the  old  French  type  became  less  and 
less  prominent.  Coming  to  Dublin  in  1823, 
young  O'Donovan  was  sent  to  one  of  these 
Latin  schools.  His  first  intention  was  to 
enter  Maynooth  but,  finding  he  had  no 
vocation  for  the  priesthood,  he  turned  his 
attention  to  the  study  of  Irish.    A  fondness 


o'donovan's  early  years  7 

for  quoting  Latin  phrases  or  rendering 
Irish  place-names  by  their  Latin  equivalents 
revealed  in  his  after-life  the  influence  of  his 
early  training.  His  knowledge  of  Latin  also 
bore  fruit,  as  we  shall  see,  in  the  production 
of  his  Irish  Grammar,  and  in  the  growth  of 
that  feeling  for  textual  accuracy  which  a 
study  of  the  classics  is  sure  to  awaken. 

At  the  early  age  of  nine  years  we  find 
O 'Donovan  commencing  the  study  of  Irish 
and  of  Latin,  and  he  is  able  to  say  that  in 
two  years*  time  he  could  transcribe  "  Irish 
pretty  well."  He  was,  therefore,  in  a  posi- 
tion to  benefit  to  the  fulJ  by  that  Celtic 
culture  whose  twilight  gleam  filled  the  life 
of  our  people  in  the  pre-famine  years  with 
a  suffused  poetic  glow.  He  was  the  in- 
heritor and  child  of  a  glorious  past,  of  that 
traditional  culture  which  has  withdrawn 
itself  to  its  solitude  on  the  borders  of  the 
Western  Sea. 

Up  to  this  time  the  two  races  in  Ireland 
had  taken  but  little  interest  in  their  respec- 
tive literatures.  The  old  Georgian  city  of 
Dublin,  redolent  of  the  memories  of  its 
Anglo-Irish  corporation,  of  its  idolatry  of 
King  Billy  and  of  its  hatred  of  King  James, 
of  its  harbouring  of  that  literary  rebel  Swift, 
and  of  that  vagrant  sojourner  in  many 
places,  Goldsmith,  led  a  life  apart.  Its 
printing    presses — and  their  fame  is  once 


8  A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

again  being  resuscitated — turned  out  ex- 
cellent reprints  of  Addison,  Defoe,  Swift, 
Steele,  Johnson,  Parnell,  and  Goldsmith, 
whilst  the  resident  Anglo-Irish  nobility,  by 
their  patronage  of  the  Arts,  laid  the  founda- 
tion of  that  musical  tradition  which  it  is  to 
be  hoped  our  city  will  maintain  ;  but  it 
was  uninfluenced  by  the  Celtic  culture  of 
the  West.  It  looked  askance  at  it,  as  at 
something  barbarous,  and  it  has  taken  a 
century  of  propaganda  to  break  down,  even 
in  part,  the  prejudices  which,  emanating 
from  the  metropolis,  infected  a  naturally 
imitative  people.  Nor  did  the  rebellion  of 
*98,  a  rebellion  arising  amongst  palesmen 
and  amongst  Northern  Presbyterians,  do 
much  to  stir  up  an  interest  in  the  Celtic 
land  beyond.  It  developed  its  own  cycle 
of  literary  legend,  a  cycle  which  can  be 
connected  with  the  native  Celtic  one  by  a 
synthesis  which  is  not  literary  but  national. 
The  movement  for  Catholic  emancipation 
and  the  repeal  of  the  Union  stirred  the  masses 
of  the  Irish  people  and  laid  the  foundation 
of  that  long  series  of  political  agitations 
which  mark  the  years  of  the  last  century, 
but  which,  with  the  exception  of  the  Young 
Ireland  movement,  were  mainly  political ; 
if  anything,  they  centred  the  interests  of  our 
people  on  material  and  industrial,  rather 
than  on  purely  intellectual  progress  ;  whilst 


HIS   WORK  ON   THE    SURVEY  9 

the  introduction  of  a  system  of  education 
which  eliminated  all  virile  reference  to  the 
past  history,  literature,  and  language  of  the 
country  seemed  to  ring  the  death-knell  of 
all  possibility  of  resuscitating  Irish  studies, 
and  of  thus  winning  for  native  Irish  culture 
its  fitting  place  in  the  history  of  European 
civilisation. 


CHAPTER    II 

HIS   WORK   ON   THE   SURVEY 

Fortunately,  however,  apart  from  the 
tenacity  of  native  tradition,  two  forces  were 
at  play  which  helped  to  awaken  the  self- 
consciousness  of  our  race.  The  Romantic 
movement  in  English  literature,  repre- 
sented on  its  antiquarian  side  by  Scott, 
kindled  a  reverent  feeling  for  the  past  in  the 
minds  of  the  men  of  the  early  Victorian 
era.  In  poetry  this  tendency  was  repre- 
sented in  Ireland  by  Thomas  Moore,  and 
however  little  his  Tara's  Hall  or  his  Red 
Branch  Knights  would  answer  to  the  reality, 
we  must  at  least  admit  that  Moore  melodi- 
ously invited  us  to  remember  the  days  of  old, 
and  made  it  rather  fashionable  to  do  so. 
He  is  responsible  for  propagating  a  legend, 
but  a  legend  is  often  an  alluring  bait  to  a 


10  A  GROUP  OF  NATION-BUILDERS 

deeper  study  of  the  reality  underlying  it. 
As  a  collateral  result  of  the  Romantic  move- 
ment, the  apparently  more  prosaic  study 
of  antiquities  began  to  flourish.  The  Royal 
Irish  Academy,  founded  in  1795  for  the  study 
of  Science,  Polite  Literature  and  Antiquities, 
opened  the  breach  in  the  walls  of  Anglo- 
Irish  Dublin  through  which  the  first  scientific 
knowledge  of  the  history  of  the  Gael  was 
to  enter.  Unfortunately  its  exposition  was 
undertaken  in  the  early  years  of  the  last 
century  by  men  who,  foreigners  by  birth 
and  faddists  by  nature,  were  but  little  com- 
petent to  understand  it.  The  school  of 
Vallancey  and  of  Betham  produced  one 
useful  result — it  awakened  the  undying 
opposition  of  Petrie,  O'Donovan,  and 
O'Curry,  and  thus  gave  birth  to  their 
immortal  work. 

O 'Donovan's  introduction  to  the  Academy 
circle  was  through  James  Hardiman,  Com- 
missioner of  Public  Records  and  author  of 
Irish  Minstrelsy  and  of  a  History  of  Galway, 
a  man  of  scholarly  instincts,  and  one  for 
whom  O'Donovan  entertained  the  liveliest 
and  sincerest  feelings  of  friendship.  In  the 
letters  which  he  wrote  to  Hardiman,  and 
which  are  preserved  in  the  Royal  Irish 
Academy,  he  unburdens  himself  with  a 
freedom  which  makes  them  a  priceless 
record  of  his  real  opinions  on  the  various 


HIS    WORK    ON    THE    SURVEY  11 

subjects  which  agitated  him  throughout  his 
life.  Previous  to  his  employment  on  the 
Survey,  Hardiman  engaged  him,  at  a  ridicu- 
lously low  wage  it  is  true,  to  do  miscellaneous 
work,  and  during  this  time  he  made  the 
transcript  of  Peter  Connell's  Irish  Dictionary 
which  is  now  deposited  in  Trinity  College 
Library.  O 'Donovan  was  then  but  twenty- 
four  years  of  age,  and  a  few  years  later  we 
find  him  denouncing,  with  characteristic 
energy,  a  certain  Mr.  Otway,  who  had 
ventured  to  attack  Hardiman's  Irish 
Minstrelsy  in  a  paper  called  the  Examiner  : 
"  Mr.  Otway,"  he  says,  "  (Out-way,  i.e., 
Af  ATI  c-flige.i.Ai|i  feAcjA^n)  is  a  very  bad 
judge  of  the  merit  of  your  publication,  and 
I  tell  him  emphatically  that  until  he  is 
master  of  the  subject  and  of  the  original 
language  of  the  poems,  he  is  not  entitled  to 
a  hearing  at  the  bar  of  true  criticism." 
O'Donovan  was  not  long  in  establishing  his 
own  claim  to  a  hearing  at  the  bar  of  true 
criticism. 

Having  read  a  notice  in  the  Dublin  Penny 
Journal  to  the  e:ffect  that  the  Editor  was 
prepared  to  publish  articles  on  Irish  History 
and  Literature,  he  seized  the  opportunity 
for  publishing  his  first  essay  in  the  transla- 
tion of  Irish  texts,  namely — ^the  translation 
of  King  Aid f red's  Poem  which  appeared 
in  the  number  for  September  15th,  1832. 


12  A  GROUP  OF  NATION-BUILDERS 

This  was  followed  in  the  following  week 
by  his  translation  of  the  Charter  of  Newry 
in  which  is  seen  that  wide  knowledge  of 
sources  and  that  scholarly  exactitude  which 
mark  an  epoch  in  the  department  of  Irish 
Historical  Research.  A  full  list  of  his 
papers  in  this  Journal,  as  well  as  of  his 
papers  in  the  Journal  of  the  Kilkenny 
ArchfiBological  Society  and  the  Ulster 
Journal  [of  Archwology,  will  be  found  in  the 
excellent  Bibliography  of  his  works  com- 
piled by  Mr.  Henry  Dixon  for  "  An  teAb^iA- 
lAnn.**  His  papers  in  the  Dublin  Penny 
Journal  were  continued  up  to  August,  1838, 
when  his  work  on  the  Ordnance  Survey 
commenced  to  absorb  all  his  attention  and 
left  him  little  time  for  editorial  work. 

The  foundation  of  the  Historical  Depart- 
ment of  the  Ordnance  Survey  gave  O 'Dono- 
van his  real  chance.  The  desirability  of 
mapping  the  abundant  antiquarian  remains 
for  which  Ireland  is  famous  and  of  register- 
ing the  expressive  names  of  places  had  been 
felt  since  Petty 's  time.  An  accurate  ear,  a 
knowledge  of  Middle  and  Modern  Irish, 
and  above  all  a  love  of  investigation  were 
necessary  for  success  in  the  work,  and  all 
three  were  found  combmed  in  a  unique 
degree  in  O'Donovan ;  it  might  also  be 
added,  considering  the  conditions  under 
which  he  worked,  a  constitution  inured  to 


HIS    WORK   ON  THE   SURVEY  18 

hardship  and  privation.  Only  a  man  of  iron 
constitution  and  of  indomitable  will  would 
have  gone  through  with  this  work  for  which 
a  beggarly  remuneration  was  given,  and 
which  entailed  exposure  to  damp  and  chill 
and  discomfort  of  every  kind.  The  outdoor 
work  of  the  Survey  was  done  by  O 'Donovan 
practically  single-handed.  Petrie,  the  head 
of  the  Department,  with  his  little  band 
of  fellow -workers  had  their  offices  in  21 
Great  Charles  Street,  Dublin.  Of  the  per- 
sonnel of  the  sta:ff,  Wakeman,  a  member 
of  it,  has  left  us  the  following  account,  from 
which  I  make  this  extract :  "I  should  like 
to  dwell,"  he  says,  "a  moment  on  the  scene 
of  that  very  happy  time,  when  we  used  to 
meet  in  Dr.  Petrie's  back-parlour.  There 
was  our  venerable  chief  with  his  ever  ready 
smile  and  gracious  word  ;  there  poor  Charles 
Mangan  with  his  queer  puns  and  jokes,  and 
odd  little  cloak,  and  wonderful  hat.  It 
was  in  that  office  Mangan  penned  his  since 
famous  ballad.  The  Woman  of  Three  Cows, 
and  1  verily  believe  the  composition  did 
not  occupy  him  half  an  hour.     .     . 

"At  this  time  O'Donovan  was  about 
thirty  years  of  age.  As  in  the  case  of  almost 
every  man  who  has  risen  to  distinction  he  was 
an  unwearied  worker,  never  sparing  himself 
and  evidently  holding  his  occupation  a 
labour  of  love.     With  all  employed  in  the 


14  A  GROUP  OF  NATION-BUILDERS 

office  he  was  a  general  favourite,  and  in  the 
intervals  between  his  most  serious  business 
would  often  give  us  some  of  his  experiences 
as  a  traveller,  telJing  his  tale  in  a  rich 
emphatic  manner  peculiarly  his  own." 

From  1832,  when  he  succeeded  O'Reilly, 
the  compiler  of  the  Irish  Dictionary, 
O'Donovan  was  continuously  engaged  on 
the  Survey  till  its  suppression  by  Govern- 
ment in  1842.  At  first  lists  of  names  of 
places  were  drawn  up,  and  for  this  purpose 
he  consulted  printed  and  manuscript 
sources.  His  knowledge  of  the  Irish 
language  stood  him  here  in  good  stead,  and 
his  information  with  time  became  encyclo- 
psedic.  But  this  work  was  only  preparatory 
to  his  work,  as  we  might  term  it,  in  the 
field.  With  a  mind  replete  with  historical, 
antiquarian,  and  literary  lore,  and  with  an 
imagination  quick  to  recreate  scenes  of  a 
distant  past,  he  started  on  his  tour  of  in- 
vestigation and  verification  in  the  various 
counties  of  Ireland.  Like  O'Dubhagain, 
that  ancient  topographer  in  verse,  whose 
work  he  was  afterwards  to  edit  with  loving 
care,  he  could  preface  the  account  of  his 
epic  journeying  with  the  legend  : 

UimaIIxmti  cimcheAlt  tia  |ro"otA — 
"  Let  us  journey  round  Ireland  "  ; 

and  journey  he  did  with  the  zest  of  a  man 
to  whom  every  inch  of  Irish  ground  was 


HIS    WORK   ON   THE  SUEVEY  15 

pregnant  with  suggestion,  and  to  whom  the 
manners  and  customs  of  his  countrymen 
were  a  perennial  source  of  interest. 

The  Survey  letters,  103  volumes  of  which 
are  deposited  in  the  Royal  Irish  Academy, 
are  the  greatest  single  monument  of  his 
labour.  They  are  probably  the  most  re- 
markable and  largest  series  of  official  letters 
in  the  world.  A  hundred  books  could  be 
written  from  the  material  ♦they  afford ; 
for  in  them  we  find  history,  antiquities, 
genealogies,  legends,  and  that  which  now 
deserves  special  mention — observations  on 
contemporary  types  and  customs.  O'Dono- 
van  is  famous  for  his  learning, — but  in 
these  letters  we  see  how  little  of  the  pedant 
he  was.  They  are  the  least  official  letters 
ever  penned.  O 'Donovan  possessed  that 
naivete  of  expression,  that  child-like  zest 
in  the  study  of  human  nature,  and  that 
opened-eyed  readiness  to  receive  impres- 
sions which  would  have  made  of  him  a 
first-rate  delineator  of  social  types  and 
customs.  As  it  is,  forgetting  for  a  moment 
the  official  and  learned  side  of  his  work,  it 
is,  1  think,  safe  to  say  that  the  most  intimate 
picture  of  Ireland  immediately  before  the 
Famine  is  to  be  got  from  his  letters. 

This  quickness  of  observation  for  present 
things  was  united  to  an  imaginative 
sympathy  with  the  past.     Standing  in  the 


16  A  GROUP  OF  NATION-BUILDERS 

graveyard  of  Uisge-chaoin  in  the  County  of 
Donegal,  in  which  the  grave-stones  exhibit 
the  names  of  the  principal  septs  of  Inish- 
owen,  "  I  was  moved,"  he  says,  "  by  various 
emotions  upon  viewing  the  graveyard 
which  encloses  the  ashes  of  Prince  Eoghan, 
the  first  Christian  convert  in  Inishowen,  and 
of  fifty  generations  of  his  descendants,  and 
these  emotions  were  heightened  by  viewing 
the  princely  figure  of  MacLoughlin,  the 
eldest  branch  of  his  descendants,  who  is 
now  the  actual  possessor  of  the  old  grave- 
yard and  of  the  field  in  which  the  celebrated 
Uisge-chaoin  or  Clarifont  springs." 

Nothing  but  the  power  of  thus  emotion- 
alising his  work  would  have  enabled  him 
to  go  through  with  the  investigation  of  the 
spelling  of  62,000  townlands  and  of  144,000 
names  on  maps.  It  gives  us  the  key  to  the 
zest  with  which  he  confronted  difficalties  that 
would  have  been  insurmountable  to  most 
men.  Quite  frequently  we  find  references 
such  as  the  following,  in  a  letter  dated 
September  3rd,  1835,  from  Rosnakill : 
"  We  finished  the  Index  to  the  Barony  of 
Kilmacrenan  at  2  o'clock  last  night  after 
having  worked  sixteen  hours  on  it  without 
intermission."  It  was  no  wonder,  therefore, 
that  O'Donovan,  who  had,  before  going  on 
the  Survey,  recruited  his  health  at  the  house 
of  his  friend  Myles  John  O'Reilly,  should 


HIS   WORK    ON   THE    SURVEY  IT 

again  feel  the  effects  of  overwork  and  hard- 
ship. In  the  letter  quoted  above  we  find 
him  stating  :  "1  am  feverish  to-day  from 
the  effect  of  damp  beds,  the  absorption  of 
water  always  creates  pains  in  my  bones  "  ; 
and  in  a  letter  dated  September  11th,  1835), 
from  Ballyconnell^  in  which  we  see  his 
kind-hearted  consideration  for  others,  he 
says  :  "1  am  glad  that  O'Keeffe  has  not 
ventured  to  come  here  in  this  stormy 
season,  for  the  irregularity  of  the  diet,  the 
damp  of  the  beds,  and  the  annoyance  to  be 
met  with  in  country  public-houses  would 
kill  him  in  one  month." 

Of  the  niggardly  treatment  of  O 'Donovan 
in  the  matter  of  remuneration,  the  following 
remark  from  one  of  the  Down  Letters  is,  1 
think,  sufficient :  "  By  going  so  often  to 
Hillsborough  I  lost  three  days  and  incurred 
an  expense  of  nine  shillings,  which  caused 
me  great  anxiety  of  mind."  To  comment 
on  that  would  be  an  impertinence.  Such 
was  the  treatment  meted  out  to  one  of  the 
greatest  Irish  scholars  of  the  century,  a 
man  on  whose  titanic  work  a  whole  host  ot 
parasitic  scholars  have  battened  without  in 
the  least  exhausting  the  noble  vein  of  golden 
information  of  which  he  was  the  creator. 


CHAPTER   III 

INFLUENCE   OF   PETRIE   ON    o' DONOVAN   AND 
O' CURRY 

Though  it  would  rather  surprise  some  of 
their  contemporaries  were  1  to  put  it  in  this 
way,  I  have  no  hesitation  in  saying  that 
O 'Donovan   and   O' Curry  gathered  round 
them  that  small  band  of  earnest  workers 
who  were  to  lay  the  foundations  of  Irish 
scholarship  in  the  coming  years.     It  is  true 
O'Donovan   looked    on    Hardiman   as   his 
sponsor   in    Irish   studies,    but   it   was   to 
O'Donovan  and  O' Curry  that  Todd  and 
Petrie  came  for  the  solution  of  all  their 
linguistic  difficulties,  and  it  was  O'Curry, 
Hardiman,    Petrie,    and    O'Donovan    who 
established  the  Republic  of  Irish  Letters. 

Up  to  this  time  the  department  of 
Antiquities  in  the  Royal  Irish  Academy 
had  been  dominated  by  Betham,  the  Ulster 
King-at-Arms,  but  Petrie  and  Todd  soon 
set  to  work  to  oust  him  from  the  position 
he  held  and  to  lay  the  foundation  of  an 
accurate  and  scholarly  school  in  that  in- 
stitution. The  coup  de-grdce  was  given  to 
Betham  in  the  battle  royal  fought  in  the 
Academy  on  the  evening  of  June  24th,  1844  ; 

to  this  famous  bout  O'Donovan  thus  graphic- 
is 


INFLUENCE  OF  PETEIE  !• 

ally  refers  in  a  letter  written  to  Hardiman 
from  49  Bayview  Avenue,  North  Strand, 
Dublin,  and  dated  June  25th,  1844  :  *'  I 
hear  no  news  here  worth  telling  but  that 
His  Majesty  of  Ulster,  Congal  the  Perverse 
[i.e.,  Betham],  is  giving  vast  annoyance  to 
the  Antiquarian  Druid  [i.e.,  Petrie].  He 
has  also,  I  understand,  thrown  vast  diffi- 
culties in  the  way  of  the  Ordnance  Memoir 
by  personal  exertions  in  London.  I  can 
nearly  believe  that  he  has  made  an  impres- 
sion on  the  mind  of  Sir  Robert  Peel,  both 
by  speaking  and  writing,  as  can  scarcely  be 
removed  by  the  party  who  are  for  the 
Memoir — ^Tory  and  influential  as  they  con- 
fessedly are !  What  a  majestic  warrior 
his  Majesty  of  Ulster  is  !  What  an  ad- 
mirable leader  he  would  have  been  in  the 
time  of  William  Fitz-Adelm  in  Connaught ! 
He  spoke  for  two  hours  against  the  poor 
Antiquary  last  night,  but  was  most  ably 
met  by  Sam  Ferguson  (the  Forger  of  the 
Anchor),  who  explained  the  cause  of  all 
his  Majesty's  opposition  to  the  Antiquary, 
and  actually  drove  his  Majesty  out  of  the 
room  by  the  keenness  and  vigour  of  his 
tongue.  This  was  griffin  against  lion  ram- 
pant !  The  wivems,  hawks,  and  choughs 
looked  on  and  chuckled  with  delight  at  the 
battle  but  took  very  little  part  in  it." 
From  various  sources  and  at  different 


20  A  GROUP   OF    NATION=BUILDERS 

times  Trinity  College  and  the  Royal  Irish 
Academy  had  acquired  a  considerable 
number  of  Irish  Manuscripts.  To  mention 
but  a  few,  they  possessed  the  originals  of  the 
Book  of  Armagh,  the  Leabhar  na  h-Uidhre, 
the  Book  ofLeinster,  the  Leabhar  Breac,  the 
Book  of  Lecan,  the  Yellow  Book  oj  Lecan,  the 
holograph  copy  of  the  Four  Masters;  and 
as  early  as  1836  O'Donovan  commenced  the 
catalogue  of  the  Manuscripts  in  Trinity 
College,  just  as  later  O'Curry,  whose  work 
was  completed  by  O'Longan,  commenced 
his  famous  catalogue  of  the  Royal  Irish 
Academy   Manuscripts. 

Todd  was  anxious,  however,  that  O'Dono- 
van's  great  powers  should  not  be  confined 
to  the  routine  work  of  cataloguing,  but  that 
he  should  be  enabled  to  devote  himself 
to  the  translation  and  editing  of  Irish  texts. 
To  this  end  he  got  the  Royal  Irish  Academy 
to  apply  in  1836  to  the  Chancellor  of  the 
Exchequer  for  a  grant  to  aid  him  in  his 
patriotic  undertaking.  The  application,  as 
may  be  expected,  produced  no  result,  and 
then  Todd  decided  to  start  the  Irish  Arch- 
aeological Society  so  that  private  enterprise 
might  in  some  way  make  up  for  the  failure 
in  duty  of  a  so-called  paternal  government. 

It  was  the  commencement  of  that  long 
series  of  Societies,  which,  founded  by  the 
people  themselves,  were  to  do  for  the  modern 


INFLUENCE  OF  PETRIE  21 

Irish  scholar  what  the  ancient  Irish  chiefs 
and  abbots  did  for  the  "  ollamh  "  in  the 
good  days  of  yore. 

The  refusal  in  1836  to  give  a  grant  in  aid 
for  the  editing  of  Irish  manuscripts  was 
followed  up  in  1842  by  the  suppression  of 
the  Historical  Department  of  the  Ordnance 
Survey.  This  marked  a  turning-point  in 
the  life  of  O 'Donovan.  His  great  work  on 
the  Survey  was  thus  brought  peremptorily 
to  a  close ;  but  we  can  scarcely  regret  it 
when  we  consider  that  it  left  him  free  to 
enter  upon  that  career  of  original  investiga- 
tion and  editing  of  our  manuscript  literature 
which  opened  a  new  chapter  in  the  history 
of  the  origins  of  European  civilisation. 

It  is  a  mistake  to  think  that  the  antiquarian 
spirit  is  opposed  to  interest  in  living  human 
things ;  it  is  rather  the  over-flow  of  the 
humanistic  spirit,  and  is  found  in  its 
highest  development  in  men  who  have  the 
keenest  relish  for  the  study  of  man  as  he  is 
— Homo  sum,  nihil  humani  a  me  alienum 
puto  ;  it  is  a  healthy  antidote  to  the  wretched 
circumscription  of  many  contemporary 
writers ;  it  widens  man's  horizon  and 
teaches  him  that  he  is  the  heir  of  all 
the  ages.  I  have  noted  before,  in  deal- 
ing with  his  Letters,  O'Donovan's  keen 
interest  in  the  humours  of  the  characters 
he  happened   on    in  his   journeying.     He 


22  A  GROUP  OF  NATION -BUILDERS 

introduces  us  to  a  motley,  Chaucerian  crowd, 
representative  types  of  the  Irish  population 
in  pre-famine  days  ;  priest,  parson,  Presby- 
terian minister,  landlords  and  their  tenants, 
farmer  and  peasant ;  and  he  expresses 
himself  with  a  freedom  and  a  directness, 
and  with  a  lively  sense  of  humour  that 
recalls  the  attitude  of  mind,  if  not  exactly 
the  manner,  of  the  morning-star  of  English 
song.  What  the  working  out  of  such  a 
vein  would  have  led  him  to,  I  will  not  here 
venture  to  say.  His  energies  were  diverted 
into  more  purely  learned  channels  by  the 
influence  of  Hardiman  and  more  especially 
of  Petrie. 

Petrie  was  a  man  of  wide  culture  and  of 
great  artistic  tastes,  and  one  likely  to  exer- 
cise an  overwhelming  influence  on  the  young 
Irish  boy  whose  sound  judgment  early 
recognised  in  him  a  master  and  a  safe  guide. 
The  life-work  of  Petrie  lay  in  the  department 
of  Antiquities,  and  it  is  no  wonder  therefore 
that  O'Donovan  caught  to  the  full  the 
spirit  of  his  first  chief ;  nor  need  we  be 
surprised  at  finding  him  referrmg  in  the 
following  words  to  Petrie  as  "  the  most  dis- 
tinguished antiquary  in  Ireland,  from  whom 
he  first  acquired  whatever  skill  he  possesses 
in  the  distinguishing  History  from  Fable." 

In  addition  to  the  Archaeological  Society 
founded  by  Todd,  a  second  Society,  the 


INFLUENCE    OF    PETRIE  28 

Celtic,  was  started  in  1847.  Todd  had 
avowed  his  intention  of  winning  over  the 
Irish  nobility  and  gentry  to  some  feeling 
of  pride  in  the  past  of  the  country  from 
which  they  derived  their  incomes.  We 
meet,  therefore,  with  a  decidedly  formidable, 
if  not  popular,  array  of  names  on  the  first 
Council  and  member  list  of  the  Archaeo- 
logical Society.  The  popular  party  evidently 
felt  slighted,  and  the  Celtic  Society  was 
started  with  the  Rev.  Laurence  O'Renehan, 
of  Maynooth,  as  President,  whilst  on  the 
Council  we  find  the  names  of  Daniel 
O'Connell,  M.P.,  and  William  Smith  O'Brien, 
M.P.  John  O'Daly  later  became  Secretary. 
The  two  Societies  ultimately  amalgamated 
and  formed  a  new  one  called  the  Irish 
Archaeological  and  Celtic  Society.  It  is 
sufficient  to  say  that  these  Societies  enabled 
O'Donovan  to  launch  his  editions  of  Irish 
texts  on  the  market,  and  that  Ireland  owes 
a  debt  of  gratitude  to  those  of  their  members 
who  supported  them  by  their  subscriptions. 
Anyone  familiar  with  O 'Donovan's  letters 
will  remember  how  fond  he  was  of  tracing 
the  genealogies  of  Irish  families ;  we  fre- 
quently find  him  in  bantering  mood  signing 
himself  as  :  John  the  son  of  Edmund,  the 
son  of  Edmund,  the  son  of  William,  the  son 
of  Cornelius,  and  so  on,  and  it  was  therefore 
"  con  aniore  "  that  he  set  himself  to  edit 


24  A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

The  Tribes  and  Customs  of  Hy  Many,  of 
Hy    Fiachrach,    and    of    ancient     Ossory. 
Membership  of  a  tribe,  be  it  remembered, 
depended  on  proving  one's  genealogy,  and 
it  is  therefore  not  surprising  to  find  much 
material  for  the  history  of  Irish  families  in 
our  manuscripts.       Even  in  O'Donovan's 
time — witness    his    encounter    with    John 
O'Dogherty    of    Bree    in    Inishowen,    as 
narrated  in  a  letter  of  August  21st,  1835 — 
men  were  to  be  met  with  who  could  recite 
thel  list  of  their  forbears  back  to  the  first 
founder    of    the    family.        Besides    these 
genealogical   tracts,    he   edited   the   Topo- 
graphical   Poems     of     O'Dubhagain     and 
O'Heerin,   and  the   Circuit  of  Ireland    by 
Muirchertach  Mac  Neill.      Here  he  found 
himself  peculiarly  at  home,  and  we  find  him 
lavishly  displaying  that  wealth  of  knowledge 
of   Irish    place-names,    the   foundation    of 
which  was  laid  in  his  work  on  the  Ordnance 
Survey.    His  editions  of  the  Banquet  of  Dun 
na  nGedh  and  of  the  Battle  of  Magh  Rath 
display  his  powers  as  an  editor  of  Irish  saga 
literature ;  to  the  latter  work  he  prefixed 
a  critical  dissertation  on  Irish  Epic  prose 
style  in  which  he  unreservedly  condemns 
the  turgid  manner  of  the  later  sagas  ;  his 
criticism  of  the  style  is  fundamental,  and 
nothing  better  has  been  said  about  it  since 
his  time,    From  the  same  work  we  may  be 


INFLUENCE   OF  PETRIE  25 

pardoned  for  quoting  a  criticism  of  Moore's 
History  of  Ireland,  if  only  as  a  warning  to 
those  who  would  write  the  History  of  the 
Irish  people  without  consulting  the  race's 
records  of  its  own  life  as  contained  in  the 
native  Irish  manuscripts :  "  Mr.  Moore," 
he  says,  "  is  confessedly  unacquainted  with 
the  Irish  language  ;  and  the  remains  of  our 
ancient  literature  were  therefore,  of  course, 
inaccessible  to  him.  That  great  ignorance  of 
these  unexplored  sources  of  Irish  history 
should  be  found  in  his  pages  is,  therefore,  not 
surprising  ;  but  he  ought  to  have  been  more 
conscious  of  his  deficiencies,  than  to  have 
so  boldly  hazarded  the  unqualified  assertion 
that  there  exist  in  the  Irish  Annals  no 
materials  for  the  civil  history  of  the 
country." 

Amongst  his  remaining  contributions  to 
the  publications  of  these  Societies  were  the 
Leabhar  na  gCeart  and  the  Martyrology  of 
Donegal ;  and  it  is  to  be  feared  that  Moore's 
fancy  would  not  be  caught  by  such  erudite 
works  as  these,  which  would  scarcely 
harmonise  with  his  melodious  rendering 
of  our  history. 


CHAPTER   IV 

ANNALS    OF    THE    FOUR   MASTERS 

Whilst  thus  actively  engaged  in  the  editing 
and  translation  of  texts  for  the  Irish  Societies 
O'Donovan  was  occupied  in  the  preparation 
of  the  two  works  by  which  he  is  perhaps 
best  known — the  Irish  Grammar  and  his 
edition  and  translation  of  the  Annals  of  the 
Four  Masters,  His  study  of  Latin  must 
have  directed  his  attention  at  an  early  age 
to  the  apparent  instability  of  Irish  gram- 
matical forms ;  the  printed  literature  in 
Irish  at  the  beginning  of  the  last  century 
was  scant  indeed,  and  the  spelling  of  the 
grammatical  forms  not  well  defined.  O'Don- 
ovan  set  himself  to  normalise  the  hetero- 
geneous collection  of  spellings  and  forms 
which  the  manuscript  literature  presented. 
He  did  not  intend  the  grammar  to  be  a 
phonetic  replica  of  the  colloquial  dialects 
then  existing,  and  hence  his  scheme  was 
to  register  historical  forms,  and  not  drifting 
colloquial  ones.  It  was  a  splendid  perform- 
ance at  the  time ;  it  preceded  the  great  work 
of  Zeuss — ^Jupiter  Tonans,  as  O'Donovan 
calls  him — and  any  defect  it  has  is  due  to 
the  fact  that  he  had  not  the  advantage, 
which  a  worker  in  the  same  field  would 

26 


ANNALS    OF    THE    FOUR    MASTERS         27 

possess  to-day,  of  having  a  library  of  de 
tailed    and    specialised    works    on     every 
feature  of  Celtic  grammar. 

The  holograph  copy  of  the  Annals  of  the 
Four  Masters  was  procured  for  the  Royal 
Irish  Academy  by  George  Petrie  in  the 
year  1832. 

O'Donovan  recognised  it  at  once  as  a 
work  in  the  editing  of  which  he  would  be 
enabled  to  display  the  best  qualities  of  his 
scholarship,  covering  as  it  did  the  field  of 
Irish  history  up  to  1616.  In  a  character- 
istic letter  to  Hardiman,  written  in  the  year 
1839,  he  thus  proclaims  with  pardonable 
egotism  his  fitness  for  the  work :  "  The 
Royal  Irish  Academy  have,  it  seems,  at 
length  come  to  the  resolution  of  publishing 
the  Annals  of  the  Four  Masters  from  be- 
ginning to  end  at  the  suggestion,  it  appears, 
of  the  Lord  Lieutenant.  This  is  good  news 
for  me,  if  they  do  not  attempt  to  make  a 
cat's  paw  of  me,  but  that  they  will  hardly 
succeed  in  doing  as  long  as  I  have  as  much 
as  will  keep  me  from  starving.  I  defy 
them  to  get  any  one  else  who  knows  all  the 
topography,  and  is  acquainted  with  all  the 
fairies  and  banshees  of  Ireland.  If  they  do 
not  pay  me  well,  they  may  go  to  the  devil, 
and  I  say  to  them  'non  vobis  vigilavi.'  " 

The  work  was  published  by  Mr.  George 
Smith,  the  Dublin  publisher,  at  his  own 


28  A   GROUP   OF   NATION -BUILDERS 

expense  in  magnificent  style,  and  is  a  lasting 
tribute  to  his  practical  patriotism.  The 
first  part,  for  the  years  1172  to  1616,  ap- 
peared in  1848,  and  the  second  part  dealing 
with  the  earlier  period  appeared  in  1851. 
O'Donovan,  though  its  editor,  was  no  slavish 
admirer  of  it ;  he  recognised  it  as  an  ex- 
cellent outline  of  the  history  of  the  country, 
but  his  fingers  itched  to  give  the  dry  details 
a  human  touch  from  the  wealth  of  historical 
and  legendary  anecdote  of  which  he  was  the 
repository.  In  presenting  Hardiman  with 
a  copy  we  find  him  thus  frankly  expressing 
himself  in  a  letter  dated  June  7th,  1847  : 
"  They  [i.e.,  Hardiman's  works]  will  throw 
considerable  light  on  the  barren  context 
of  the  Four  Masters,  who  appear  to  me  to 
have  courted  the  muse  of  History  with 
great  coldness.  I  often  regret  that  I  am  not 
at  liberty  to  infuse  some  of  my  own  wicked- 
ness into  the  text,  but  the  sacred  cause  of 
truth  will  oblige  me  to  give  them  to  the 
world  in  the  barren  style  of  the  original." 
Notwithstanding  this,  O'Donovan  would 
have  been  the  first  to  admit  the  truth  of  his 
friend  Sam  Ferguson's  remarks  when,  in  a 
review  of  the  Annals,  comparing  the  origins 
of  the  literature  of  the  Greeks  with  that  of 
the  Irish,  he  says  :  "  Our  cattle  spoils  and 
histories,  our  family  pedigrees,  royal  and 
princely  successions  are  as  precious  to  us 


ANNALS  OF  THE  FOUR  MASTERS  29 

now  as  theirs  were  to  them  then.  We  will 
treasure  them  as  they  did  ;  and  the  time 
may  yet  come  when  our  Egypt  herself  will 
thank  us  for  having  cherished  the  seeds  of  a 
new  Literature  after  her  own  may  possibly 
have  fallen  into  decay." 

In  the  editing  of  the  Annals  O 'Donovan 
had  the  assistance  of  his  distinguished 
contemporary  and  brother-in-law  Eugene 
O'Curry.  Both  these  men  had  to  create 
their  own  schools  and  to  attract  the  at- 
tention of  the  learned  of  their  own  country 
and  of  Europe  to  a  subject  hitherto 
totally  neglected.  It  was  not,  therefore,  till 
practically  in  the  last  decade  of  O 'Dono- 
van's life  that  any  public  recognition  of 
the  great  scholar's  work  was  bestowed 
on  him.  His  Grammar,  published  in  1845, 
elicited  at  once  the  praise  of  Bopp  and 
Grimm  ;  and  later  in  1856  he  was,  on  the 
recommendation  of  Grimm,  elected  a  corre- 
sponding member  of  the  Royal  Academy 
of  Berlin,  an  honour  which  he  shared  with 
Caspar  Zeuss,  whose  Grammatica  Celtica  had 
appeared  in  that  year.  The  publication 
of  the  first  part  of  his  edition  of  the  Annals 
of  the  Four  Masters  in  1848  won  for  him  the 
Cunningham  Gold  Medal  of  the  Royal  Irish 
Academy  as  well  as  the  Honorary  LL.D. 
of  Trinity  College,  whilst  its  completion 
induced  the  Government  to  bestow  on  him 


30  A  GEOUP  OF   NATION-BUILDERS 

a  pension  of  £50  a  year.  In  the  meantime 
he  was  chosen  as  Professor  of  Celtic  in  the 
Queen's  College,  Belfast,  which,  with  the 
Examiner  ship  in  Celtic  given  to  him  in 
1852,  made  his  income  from  all  sources 
£170  a  year — the  beggarly  monetary  reward 
of  a  life -time  of  enduring  work. 

It  is  no  wonder,  therefore,  that  he  medi- 
tated at  this  time  emigrating  to  America, 
the  home  of  so  many  of  his  exiled  country- 
men, with  numbers  of  whom,  as  he  himself 
tells  us,  he  kept  up  a  voluminous  corre- 
spondence. But  his  services  were  retained 
for  Ireland  during  the  remaining  years  of 
his  life  by  the  establishment  of  the  Brehon 
Law  Commission.  He  had  already  been 
called  to  the  Bar  and  had,  therefore,  attained 
a  certain  knowledge  of  legal  technicalities 
which  would  help  him  in  interpreting  the 
niceties  of  the  Brehon  Code.  It  was  a 
daring  undertaking,  and  it  is  ever  to  be 
regretted  that  Whitley  Stokes,  whose  work 
on  Indian  Law  is  a  classic,  did  not  devote 
himself  at  some  time  or  other  to  the  per- 
fecting and  revising  of  the  work  of  his 
famous  predecessors  and  fellow-countrymen, 
O 'Donovan  and  O' Curry.  Up  to  his  death 
O'Donovan  was  engaged  upon  the  Brehon 
Law  Tracts.  They  were  published  after  his 
death,  and  therefore  without  his  revision. 

As  far  back  as  1834  we  find  O'Donovan 


ANNALS    OF   THE   FOUR   MASTERS         81 

complaining     of     rheumatism     contracted 
through  exposure  on  the  work  of  the  Ord- 
nance Survey.    In  the  midst  of  his  work  on 
the  Brehon  Laws  he  was  stricken  down  with 
rheumatic  fever,  and  died  at  midnight  on 
the  9th  of  December,  1861 .   He  was  attended 
in  his  last  illness  by  his  old  school-mate 
Father  Nicholas  OTarrell,  C.C,  of  Marl- 
borough Street,  and  later  Parish  Priest  of 
Lusk.     He  was  buried  in  Glasnevin,  where 
a  simple  stone  with  an  inscription  in  Irish 
letters  marks  his  grave.      But  six  months 
afterwards  O 'Curry  followed  his  colleague 
to  the  grave,  and  the  cause  of  Irish  studies 
seemed  to  have  suffered  an  irreparable  loss  : 
"  O 'Donovan    and    O 'Curry,"    says    Dr. 
Reeves,    "  gone  ! — and  Dr.  Todd  in  poor 
health  and  Whitley  Stokes  thousands    of 
miles  away  ;  it  seems  to  me  as  if  a  black 
curtain  had  fallen  over  the  sunny  scene  and 
the  lively  movement  which  Irish  Literature 
presented  a  short  time  ago." 

I  fear  that  I  have  failed  to  bring  adequa- 
tely before  the  reader  of  this  short  essay 
the  greatness  of  the  work  O 'Donovan  did 
for  Ireland.  He  caught  the  warm  glow  of 
a  tradition  that  famine  was  soon  to  impair 
and  gave  it  an  immortality  in  his  work.  He 
devoted  talents  which  would  have  won  him 
renown  in  any  field  to  the  revealing  of  the 
wealth  of  the  Literature  that  lay  unnoticed 


32  A  GROUP  OF  NATION  "BUILDERS 

in  the  libraries  of  Oxford,  of  the  British 
Museum,  and  of  Ireland.  His  powerful 
influence  helped  to  lend  to  the  Irish 
political  party  of  his  day  a  poetic  idealism 
which  was  an  inspiration  to  them  and  is 
still  an  inspiration  to  us.  The  circle  of  his 
influence  embraced  men  of  all  creeds  and  of 
all  classes,  and  all  were  united  in  one  thing — 
in  admiration  of  the  greatness  of  his  scholar- 
ship. He  evoked  from  hill  and  glen,  from 
river  and  cave,  from  ancient  diin  and 
medieval  fortress  and  ruined  church  the 
historic  or  legendary  associations  of  their 
names.  He  laid  the  foundation  of  a  true 
History  of  his  Country  and  of  her  Laws. 
He  found  her  crooning  the  weird  stories  of 
her  past  by  the  turf-fire,  and  he  left  her 
with  the  copies  of  the  title-deeds  of  her 
glory  deposited  in  the  libraries  of  Europe : 

"  He  toiled  to  make  our  story  stand 
As  from  Time's  reverent,  runic  hand 

It  came  undecked 
By  fancies  false,  erect,  alone, 
The  monumental  arctic  stone 

Of  ages  wrecked. 
Kings  that  were  dead  two  thousand  years, 
Cross-bearing  chiefs  and  pagan  seers. 

He  knew  them  all ; 
And  bards  whose  very  harps  were  dust, 
And  saints  whose  souls  are  with  the  just, 

Came  at  his  call." 


EUGENE    O'CLRRY. 

{From  a  Photograph.) 


CHAPTER  V 

DUBLIN,    HOME   OF    THE    REVIVAL 

The  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  saw  the 
close  of  a  brilliant  period  in  the  history  of 
Modern  Irish  Poetry.  The  disappearance 
of  the  native  Irish  aristocracy,  consequent 
on  the  wars  of  1641  and  1688-1691,  left  the 
people  without  territorial  leaders,  and  led 
them  to  seek  inspiration  in  imaginative 
retrospect — in  a  poetry,  written  by  men  of 
the  people,  for  the  people,  and  in  a  metre 
which  possessed  in  its  union  of  stress  accent 
with  the  older  alliterative  and  assonantal 
system  qualities  which  made  a  peculiar 
appeal  to  the  sensitive  ear  of  the  Irish- 
speaking  population.  Thanks  to  the  labours 
of  Father  Dinneen  and  others  attention  has 
been  again  called  to  the  importance  of  this 
chapter  in  the  history  of  Irish  poetry. 
Father  Dinneen  especially  deserves  great 
credit  for  the  persistence  with  which  he  has 
claimed  for  eighteenth-century  lyric  quali- 
ties which  interest  not  merely  the  archaeo- 
logist but  also  the  humanist  and  critic  of 
poetic  art.  He  had,  however,  predecessors 
in  the  persons  of  appreciative  translators 
or  adapters.  Wilson  and  Miss  Brooks  in 
the  eighteenth  century ;  in  the  nineteenth 

*  33 


84  A   GROUP   OF  NATION-BUILDERS 

century,  Hardiman,  John  O'Daly,  and 
Edward  Walsh,  Jeremiah  Callanan,  Clarence 
Mangan,  and  Cornelius  MacSweeney,  Charles 
Gavan  Duffy,  Thomas  Davis,  Henry 
Montgomery,  and  Dr.  Sigerson,  President 
of  the  National  Literary  Society,  whose 
poetic  renderings  of  the  songs  of  the  Mun- 
ster  bards  convinced  at  least  one  of  his 
readers,  at  an  early  age,  of  the  intrinsic 
worth  of  Irish  Jacobite  lyrics.  Into  the 
fabric  of  Irish  life  in  the  eighteenth  century 
strands  from  the  past  were  interwoven,  and 
the  lyric  of  that  time  is  instinct  with 
historical  reminiscence  as  well  as  actual 
reference.  The  national  memory  never 
forgot  the  great  figures  of  the  Cuchulain 
and  Ossianic  cycles,  and  the  Irish-speaking 
people  never  found  any  incongruity  in  a 
full  appreciation  of  the  heroic  qualities  of 
a  Cuchulain  and  a  Finn,  with  a  higher  and, 
in  a  spiritual  sense,  different  appreciation 
of  the  heroism  of  a  Columba.  This  catho- 
licity of  Irish  manuscript  literature  is  most 
striking  and  reflects  the  peculiar  temper  of 
the  Celt — his  receptivity — his  power  of  re- 
taining past  traditions  and  of  giving  them 
living  application  to  the  present.  The 
influence  of  a  passionate  imagination,  in  the 
case  of  the  great  lyric  poets,  did  much  to 
maintain  the  old  literary  tradition,  the 
extinction  of  which  was  threatened  by  the 


DUBLIN,  HOME  OF  THE  REVIVAL    35 

passing  away  of  the  endowed  scholarship 
of  the  O'Clerys  and  MacFirbises.  For  to 
my  mind  scholarship  and  great  imaginative 
literature  are  not  as  divorced  as  some 
would  lead  us  to  think.  Without  scholar- 
ship certain  forms  of  popular  lyric  may 
flourish,  but  the  tendency  otherwise  will  be 
towards  a  neurotic  impressionism  or  a  florid 
rhetoric,  devoid  of  substance  and  of  thought. 
The  popular  lyric  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
when  at  its  best,  derived  its  inspiration 
and  its  power  from  the  intensity  of  the 
national  struggle  for  existence,  or  from  the 
strongly  felt  personal  griefs  and  joys  of  the 
poets  themselves ;  but  the  literature  of  that 
century  would  have  been  of  much  wider 
range  had  it  been  supported  by  contem- 
porary representatives  of  the  great  schools 
and  scholars  of  the  past.  Yet  the  tradition 
of  Irish  scholarship  was  not  completely 
lost,  despite  the  oppressive  enactments  of 
the  Penal  Laws.  Here  and  there  an  Irish- 
man was  to  be  found  who  nursed  a  passion 
for  the  monuments  of  Ireland's  early 
history.  Charles  O' Conor,  of  Balanagar, 
with  the  encouragement  of  that  great 
Englishman,  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson,  devoted 
himself  to  the  study  of  Irish  manuscript 
literature;  but,  with  the  best  will  in  the 
world,  he  was  unable  to  cope  with  the 
problems  that  confront  the  scholar  in  every 


86  A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

page  of  Irish  text,  whilst  the  time  was 
scarcely  ripe  to  produce  an  audience  fit 
to  appreciate  his  labours.  It  was,  as  I 
have  pointed  out  elsewhere,  the  growth 
of  the  romantic  temper  in  European  litera- 
ture and,  in  a  more  direct  way,  the  stir 
created  by  the  publication  of  MacPherson's 
Ossian  that  renewed  the  interest  in  Celtic 
origins  and  prepared  a  home  for  O' Curry 
and  O'Donovan  in  Dublin — the  centre  of 
the  English-speaking  Pale.  The  new  temper, 
represented  by  Gray's  Odes,  by  Bums' 
Scotch  Ballads,  by  Percy's  Reliques,  by 
MacPherson's  Ossian,  and  later  by  Scott's 
Lays  and,  above  all,  by  Moore's  Melodies, 
modified  the  literary  temper  of  the  old 
Georgian  capital.  The  Celt  began  to  win 
sympathisers  amidst  the  families  of  the 
Pale.  A  Beresford  and  a  Whaley  were  to 
be  succeeded  by  a  Petrie  and  a  Todd,  and 
the  stuccoed  mansions  of  a  cultured 
tyranny — cemented,  as  they  were,  with  the 
sweat  and  blood  of  a  Celtic  people — were 
to  become  the  homes  of  the  priceless 
manuscript  collections  of  the  Royal  Irish 
Academy  and  of  the  Catholic  University. 
The  gradual  conquest  of  Dublin,  its  rise  as  a 
centre  of  Celtic  studies,  is,  to  my  mind,  one 
of  the  noblest  episodes  in  the  history  of 
Ireland.  It  is  a  phase  of  the  stiTiggle  for 
the  emancipation  of  the  Irish  people.    That 


DUBLIN,    HOME  OF  THE  REVIVAL  37 

struggle  is  not  yet  ended,  but  it  has  become 
in  our  own  day  not  so  much  a  struggle  with 
forces  outside  of  ourselves  as  a  struggle 
with  ourselves — a  struggle  to  retain  some- 
thing of  our  partially  lost  inheritance  and 
a  struggle  to  achieve  a  fuller  realisation  and 
expression  of  our  individual  national  mind. 
There  is  something,  therefore,  symbolical 
in  the  fact  that  the  leader  of  the  Irish  Vol- 
unteers should  have  been  the  first  President 
of  the  Royal  Irish  Academy. 

In  tracing  the  growth  of  the  literary  and 
archaeological  movement  in  Dublin  it  is 
important  to  remember  that  it  was  this 
movement  which  in  later  years  was  to 
react  on  the  Irish-speaking  districts.  The 
foundation  of  the  Gaelic  Society,  whose 
volume  of  Transactions  appeared  in  1808, 
marked  the  opening  of  the  new  century. 
It  began  to  be  felt  that  something  should  be 
done  to  reveal  the  wealth  of  song  and  story 
lying  hidden  in  the  great  national  manu- 
scripts. If  MacPherson's  famous  forgery 
or  partial  forgery  did  nothing  else  it  suc- 
ceeded in  stimulating  an  interest  in  Ossianic 
saga,  and  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  the 
first  volume  of  the  Transactions  of  the 
Royal  Irish  Academy,  published  in  1787, 
contains  translations,  by  Dr.  Young,  of 
Scotch  Ossianic  poems.  From  the  opening 
of  the  nineteenth  century  to  the  coming  of 


38         A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

O'Donovan  and  O' Curry  a  certain  amount 
of  grammatical  and  lexicographical  work 
appeared.  This  included  the  work  of  Owen 
Connellan,  and  the  small  English-Irish 
Dictionary  of  Thaddaeus  Connellan  (1814) 
and  his  bilingual  Grammar  (1825),  and,  in 
1817,  the  Irish-English  Dictionary  of 
Edward  O'Reilly.  This  latter  was  based  on 
Tadhg  O'Nachten's  manuscript  Dictionary 
and  on  the  Dictionary  of  Scottish  Gaelic  by 
Shaw.  The  preface  shows  the  influence 
of  the  quaintly  absurd  theories  of  Vallancey 
and  Betham — theories  which  were  shattered 
by  the  more  accurate  scholarship  of  O' Curry 
and  O'Donovan.  The  list  of  subscribers  is 
a  curious  document.  It  contains  the  names 
of  men  of  diverse  reputation  and  political 
temper.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  the 
Alma  Mater  of  Eugene  O'Growney,  May- 
nooth  College,  supplies  a  solid  phalanx  of 
fifty  priests  and  student-subscribers,  headed 
by  the  Reverend  Doctor  Bartholomew 
Crotty,  President  of  the  College,  whilst  the 
Right  Honorable  Henry  Grattan  and  Daniel 
O'Connell,  Esq.,  of  Merrion  Square,  find 
themselves  in  the  company  of  the  Right 
Hon.  Lord  Norbury,  Chief  Justice  of  the 
Common  Pleas,  and  of  Leonard  McNally, 
Esq.,  of  Harcourt  Street. 

During  these  first  years  of  the  century, 
whilst  Grattan  and  O'Connell  were  fighting 


DUBLIN,    HOME   OF   THE    REVIVAL        39 

the  battle  of  political  and  religious  freedom, 
two  young  men,  the  one  in  Kilkenny,  the 
other  in  Clare,  were  cultivating  a  know- 
ledge of  the  Irish  language  which  was  to 
make  of  them  the  future  champions  of  the 
literary  and  historical  glories  of  their 
country.  O'Donovan  came  to  Dublin,  in 
1826,  with  an  introduction  from  James 
Scurry  to  James  Hardiman.  Edward 
O'Reilly  died  in  1829,  and  it  was  on  the 
evening  of  the  7th  January,  1832,  that 
young  O'Donovan,  with  a  letter  of  introduc- 
tion from  Larcom,  the  head  of  the  Ordnance 
Survey,  called  on  Petrie  in  Great  Charles 
Street.  Petrie,  as  O'Donovan  says,  re- 
ceived him  with  great  kindness  and  pre- 
sented him  with  his  copy  of  Cormac's 
Glossary.  It  was  practically  his  initiation, 
as  successor  to  O'Reilly,  into  the  work  of 
the  Ordnance  Survey.  At  the  same  time 
O' Curry  was  devoting  every  spare  moment 
to  the  study  of  Irish,  whilst  endeavouring 
to  eke  out  a  livelihood  as  an  employe  in 
the  Lunatic  Asylum  at  Limerick. 


CHAPTER   VI 

o'CURRY's  position   in   the  IRISH   REVIVAL 

Eugene  O' Curry  was  bom  in  the  year 
1794,  at  Dunaha,  in  the  County  of  Clare.* 
From  his  father,  Owen  M6r,  to  whose  great 
traditional  knowledge  of  Irish  literature 
and  music  his  son  never  tired  of  referring, 
O' Curry  derived  that  inner  sympathy  and 
living  acquaintance  with  the  literature  of 
his  country,  which  could  only  be  found  in 
an  Irishman  to  the  manner  bom.  The 
county  of  Donnchadh  O'Daly,  of  Andrew 
MacCurtin,  of  Michael  Comyn,  and  of 
Brian  Merriman,  was  then  practically  a 
purely  Irish-speaking  one,  and  O' Curry 
grew  up  amidst  a  people  whose  literary 
recreation  was  the  recitation  of  Irish  saga, 
of  Ossianic  lays,  and  the  singing  of  Jacobite 
songs.  The  war  with  Napoleon  seems  to 
have  reacted  favourably  on  Irish  agricul- 
ture, and  the  boyhood  of  O' Curry  was 
passed  in  comparative  comfort.  But,  in 
1815,  Owen  M6r  O' Curry  gave  up  his  farm 
and    retired    to   Limerick,    where  his   son 

*  This  is  the  first  time  the  correct  date  is  given.  It 
is  proved  from  the  following  entry  which  I  found  in 
O'Curry  MSS.,  Maynooth,  2.  G.  8.  p.  56  :  "I  was  born 
at  Dunaha  West,  about  three  miles  south  of  Kilkee, 
on  the  11th  November,  1794." 

40 


O'CURRY  AND    THE    IRISH   REVIVAL     41 

obtained  a  position  in  the  Lunatic  Asylum. 
It  is  strange  to  think  of  the  future  Pro- 
fessor at  the  CathoHc  University  in  DubHn, 
one  of  the  best  known  Irish  scholars  of 
his  day,  passing  twenty  years  of  his  life  in 
such  uncongenial  surroundings.  Yet  it 
was  no  unmixed  blessing  that  kept  him  in 
touch  with  his  native  county  of  Clare.  He 
seems  early  to  have  earned  a  local  reputa- 
tion as  an  authority  on  the  Irish  language, 
and  as  a  collector  of  Irish  manuscripts  ; 
and  when  Mr.  George  Smith,  of  the  firm  of 
Hodges  and  Smith,  Dublin,  received  a 
commission  to  purchase  Irish  manuscripts 
for  the  Royal  Irish  Academy  collection,  he 
was  fortunate  in  being  introduced  by  the 
medical  superintendent  of  the  Asylum  to 
Eugene  O' Curry.  Through  Smith,  O' Curry 
received  an  invitation  to  join  the  Ordnance 
Survey  staff,  under  Petrie,  and  he  came  to 
Dublin  and  entered  on  his  duties  in  Novem- 
ber, 1835.  We  find  O'Donovan  sending  a 
characteristic  letter  from  Ballyconnel  dated 
September  10th,  1835,  to  Mr.  Curry, 
Limerick,  and  addressing  him  familiarly 
as  "  My  dear  Eugenius."  It  is  a  striking 
commentary  on  the  labours  of  these  two 
great  men  to  think  that  at  this  time 
O'Donovan  could  have  written  to  0' Curry 
asking  him  had  he  ever  heard  of  Balor 
B6menn ;  and  to  imagine  how  the  O'Donovan 


42  A  GROUP  OF  NATION-BUILDERS 

and  the  O' Curry  of  later  years  would 
have  opened  their  eyes  in  astonishment  at 
any  Irish  scholar  who  would  profess  ignor- 
ance of  "  Him  of  the  Mighty  Blows." 

There  has  always  seemed  to  me  some- 
thing appropriate  in  the  fact  that  it  was  on 
the  rising  ground  stretching  from  the  mouth 
of  the  Tolka  River  towards  Mount  joy 
Square  and  Phibsboro',  the  scene  of  Brian's 
great  victory  in  1014,  that  the  little  army 
of  Irish  scholars  encamped  and  commenced 
the  battle  for  the  recognition  of  the  historic 
and  literary  glories  of  Ireland's  past.  In 
Summer  Hill  lived  John  D' Alton;  in  Gard- 
iner Street,  James  Hardiman  ;  in  Bayview 
Avenue,  Newcomen  Place,  and  later  in 
Buckingham  Street,  John  O'Donovan  ;  in 
Portland  Street,  O' Curry  ;  in  Summer  Street 
the  O'Longans,  whilst  in  21  Great  Charles 
Street,  in  the  house  of  George  Petrie,  was  the 
office  of  the  Historical  Department  of  the 
Ordnance  Survey.  In  the  centre  of  this 
district,  in  the  year  1828,  O' Council  laid  the 
foundation  stone  of  the  famous  O'Connell 
Schools,  or,  as  they  are  sometimes  called, 
Richmond  Street  Schools.  Here  the  chil- 
dren of  O' Curry  and  O'Longan  received  their 
early  education,  and,  as  an  alumnus  of  these 
schools,  I  am  in  a  position  to  state  that  the 
spirit  of  devotion  to  Ireland  was  ever  to  be 
found  in  them.     You  will  pardon  me,  I  am 


O' CURRY    AND    THE   IRISH    REVIVAL      43 

sure,  if  I  lay  so  much  stress  upon  the  spirit 
and  atmosphere  of  the  time.  To  us,  Irish- 
men, the  history  of  Irish  studies  is  not  the 
history  of  philological  dissection  of  a 
corpus  vile,  it  is  the  history  of  the  living 
soul  of  Ireland,  and  we  turn  to  it  to  awaken 
and  keep  alive  in  ourselves  the  enthusiasms 
which  animated  the  best  representatives  of 
our  race. 

The  appointment  of  O' Curry  to  the  staff 
of  the  Ordnance  Survey,  in  1835,  made  it 
possible  to  create  a  division  of  labour 
between  himself  and  O'Donovan.  O'Dono- 
van  was  a  bom  topographer,  whilst 
O' Curry's  tastes  lay  in  the  domain  of  textual 
criticism  and  in  that  of  the  history  of  Irish 
literature  and  culture.  Not  that  O'Donovan 
was  by  any  means  of  the  dry-as-dust  order 
of  scholars.  As  I  have  pointed  out  else- 
where, his  wondrous  collection  of  letters 
is  full  of  sparkling  wit  and  vivacious 
criticism  of  men  and  things  ;  and,  as  he 
himself  tells  us,  his  fingers  itched  to  enliven 
the  sober  details  of  the  Annals  of  the  Four 
Masters  with  the  quips  and  cranks  of  his 
own  imaginative  fancy.  Whilst  O'Donovan 
was  away  in  the  country  making  investiga- 
tions on  the  spot  into  the  forms  of  Irish 
place-names  and  the  traditions  associated 
with  them,  O' Curry  remained  at  home 
supplying   him    with   illustrative   extracts 


44  A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

from  ancient  Irish  manuscripts.  This 
enabled  him  to  become  early  familiar  with 
the  chief  manuscripts  in  the  Royal  Irish 
Academy  and  Trinity  College,  and  laid  the 
foundation  of  that  general  knowledge  of 
their  scope  and  contents  which,  it  may  be 
safely  said,  has  never  since  been  equalled 
by  any  single  scholar.  The  story  of  his  life 
is  the  story  of  the  patient  investigation  of 
the  national  manuscripts  of  Ireland  which 
in  him  found  their  first  adequate  inter- 
preter. Almost  immediately  on  his  arrival 
in  Dublin  he  set  himself  to  the  task  of  copy- 
ing the  great  vellum  manuscripts  which 
fortunately  had  escaped  the  ravages  of 
time.  As  early  as  1836  he  made  a  copy  for 
the  Royal  Irish  Academy  of  the  manuscript 
containing  the  Genealogies  compiled  by 
Duald  MacFirbis,  which  was  then  in  the 
possession  of  the  Earl  of  Roden.*  For  the 
Royal  Irish  xlcademy  O' Curry  also  made  a 
copy  of  the  Book  oj  Lismore,  whilst  he  en- 
riched the  library  of  Trinity  College  with 
copies  of  the  Book  of  Lecan,  the  Leabhar 
Breac  and  the  Leabhar  na  h-Uidhre — the 
latter  left  uncompleted  at  his  death. 
O' Curry  was  no  slavish  transcriber  however. 
A  mere  catalogue  of  the  pieces  copied  by 
him  would  fill  many  a  page,  but,  apart  from 

*  The  original  manuscript  is  now  in  the  possession 
of  the  Right  Honorable  Michael  F,  Cox. 


O' CURRY  AND  THE  IRISH  REVIVAL  45 

his  official  transcriptions,  he  had  the  habit 
of  noting  whatever  struck  him  as  throwing 
light  on  the  manners  and  customs  of  the 
Irish  people.  An  adequate  idea  of  the  written 
sources  of  his  masterly  lectures  can  only  be 
had  by  those  who  have  worked  through 
the  volumes  of  extracts  which  he  has  left 
behind  him.  Fresh,  as  I  myself  am,  from 
the  cataloguing  of  one  collection  of  his  un- 
published transcriptions  and  translations, 
I  am,  perhaps,  in  a  peculiarly  favourable 
position  to  estimate  the  gigantic  labour  of 
the  man.  The  oldest  and  most  difficult 
texts  seemed  but  to  whet  his  curiosity  and 
to  awaken  in  him  the  desire  to  make  them 
yield  their  long-hidden  secrets.  In  this 
respect  he  out-distanced  O'Donovan,  whose 
labours,  if  we  except  the  Brehon  Laws,  lay 
in  a  region  where  textual  difficulties  were 
not  so  great.  And  it  must  always  be  re- 
membered that  it  was  only  in  the  last  ten 
years  of  his  life  that  O' Curry  had  the  ad- 
vantage of  having  at  his  command  the  great 
Grammar  of  Zeuss.  When  one  considers  the 
difficulties  that  beset  the  path  of  a  textual 
editor,  even  in  our  day,  one  can  only  wonder 
that  the  mistakes  made  by  him  were  not  a 
thousand  times  greater  than  they  were. 

From  1835  till  the  suppression  of  the 
Historical  Department  of  the  Ordnance 
Survey    he   was    mostly    engaged    on    the 


46  A  GROUP  OF  NATION-BUILDERS 

manuscripts  of  Trinity  College  and  the 
Royal  Irish  Academy.  By  that  time  he 
had  become  familiar  with  the  contents  of 
the  great  vellum  codices,  and  had,  as  I 
have  said,  acquired  an  encyclopaedic  know- 
ledge of  their  subject-matter — a  knowledge 
sufficient  to  make  clear  to  him  that  what 
was  most  urgently  needed  was  a  general 
resume  of  their  contents  and  a  key  to  their 
language  in  the  shape  of  a  dictionary  and 
of  a  collection  of  the  ancient  glossaries. 
He  must  have  frequently  seen  the  valuable 
Dictionary  of  Peter  O'Connell,  which  was 
begun  in  1785  and  completed  in  1819. 
O'Connell's  Dictionary  has  been  a  mine 
from  which  editors  of  Irish  texts  have  de- 
rived material  help,  sometimes,  indeed, 
without  acknowledgment.  Born  at  Carna, 
in  the  Co.  Clare,  O'Connell  was  a  frequent 
visitor  at  Eoghan  Mor  O' Curry's  house,  not 
ten  miles  distant  from  his  own,  and  it  was 
he  who  introduced  the  future  Professor  to 
those  more  difficult  and  earlier  forms  of  the 
language  which  men  like  O'Flanagan  took 
to  be  a  peculiar  dialect  of  Irish.  O' Curry 
tried  later  to  procure  the  Dictionary.  It 
had  been  pledged  by  O'Connell  in  Tralee, 
was  purchased  by  Hardiman,  and  sold  by 
the  latter  to  the  British  Museum.  We 
possess  however  copies  of  it,  by  O'Donovan, 
in  the  Royal  Irish  Academy  and  in  Trinity 


O' CURRY   AND   THE    IRISH  REVIVAL       47 

College.  The  knowledge  thus  gained  by- 
young  O' Curry  threw  a  new  light  on  the 
modern  Irish  language  and  literature.  He 
must  have  come  to  recognise  that  the  his- 
toric names  occurring  in  the  lyrics  and 
folk-tales  of  the  eighteenth  century  en- 
shrined the  memories  of  a  great  past ;  and 
that  that  past  could  not  be  adequately 
revealed  till  the  records  of  it  in  the  ancient 
tongue  of  Ireland  were  made  known  to  a 
public  up  till  then  sadly  ignorant  of  them. 
It  was  at  this  time  that  the  famous  inter- 
view between  O' Curry  and  Tom  Moore 
took  place — an  interview  which  showed  at 
once  the  honesty  of  Moore,  and  the  impres- 
sion which  the  work  of  the  great  Irish  scholar 
made  upon  the  most  talented  Irishman  of 
his  day.  The  time  has  not  even  as  yet 
arrived  for  the  writing  of  an  exhaustive 
history  of  the  Irish  people.  Many  of  the 
histories  we  possess  present  but  a  ghastly 
outline  of  their  real  life  ;  when  a  synthesis 
of  that  life  is  effected  it  will  be  found  to 
contain,  as  an  integral  and  most  important 
part,  the  results  of  the  line  of  work  which 
O'Curry  and  O'Donovan  opened  up. 
O'Curry  joined  the  Ordnance  Survey  in 
1835  and  specialised  in  manuscript  work 
rather  than  in  work  in  the  field.  It  would, 
however,  be  a  mistake  to  think  that  he 
did  not  contribute  to  the  famous  Survey 


48         A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

Letters,  more  popularly  known  as  0*Dono- 
van's  Letters.  For  example,  the  Wicklow 
Letters  contain  quite  a  number  sent  by 
him  to  Larcom,  with  interesting  accounts 
of  the  places  he  visited  and  of  the  incidents 
he  met  with  in  his  tours.  Larcom,  the  head 
of  the  Survey,  seems  to  have  been  anything 
but  an  official  martinette,  and  he  evidently 
encouraged  and  enjoyed  O'Donovan  and 
O' Curry's  quaint  remarks  in  their  letters 
on  men,  places,  the  weather,  and  things  in 
general.  In  fact,  the  men  of  the  mid- 
nineteenth  century  seem  to  have  been  by 
no  means  a  heavy-footed  race — they  took 
their  scholarship  seriously  but  themselves 
not  too  much  so.  Witness  the  echoes  of 
the  wit-combats  of  O'Donovan,  Mangan, 
Meehan,  Gilbert,  and  Wakeman — hearsay 
for  many  of  us,  echoes  for  some  of  us,  per- 
chance a  memory  for  a  few. 

It  should  be  remembered  in  apportioning 
the  praise  due  to  O'Donovan  for  his  magnifi- 
cent collection  of  Letters  that  it  was 
O' Curry's  aid,  in  sending  him  illustrative 
extracts,  that  helped  O'Donovan  to  solve 
the  topographical  and  historical  difficulties 
presented  to  him  in  the  places  he  visited. 
As  an  example  of  the  thoroughness  with 
which  these  two  men  did  their  work,  and  of 
the  aid  which  they  gave  to  one  another,  I 
may  instance  the  following.       On  March 


O' CURRY   AND   THE  IRISH  REVIVAL        49 

80th,  1840,  we  find  O'Donovan  writing  to 
Larcom  from  Glendalough,  explaining  to 
him  his  reason  for  delaying  in  that  historic 
spot,  and  the  reason  he  gives  is  that  he  is 
waiting  to  get  from  O' Curry  a  copy  of  the 
^ife  of  St,  Kevin,  "  in  order,"  he  says,  "  to 
compare  it  with  the  topography  of  the 
district."  It  may  interest  the  general 
public  to  know  that  it  is  in  this  volume  of 
the  Letters  that  O'Donovan  clears  St.  Kevin 
of  the  crime  of  having  drowned  the  famous 
Kathleen,  and  proves  that  the  punishment 
went  no  further  than  a  scourging  with 
nettles  !  As  a  further  example  of  the  way 
in  which  topographical  and  manuscript 
research  went  hand  in  hand  at  this  time,  I 
may  quote  the  following  passage  from 
O' Curry's  Manuscript  Materials ;  speaking 
of  the  FSlire  of  Aengus,  he  says  :  "It  was 
during  the  progress  of  the  late  Ordnance 
Survey  that  this  tract  came  first  into 
notice,  and  it  is  no  ordinary  satisfaction  to 
me  to  have  to  say  that  I  was  the  first 
person  in  modern  times  that  discovered  the 
value  of  its  contents  when,  under  the  able 
superintendence  of  Col.  Larcom  and  Dr. 
Petrie,  I  brought  them  to  bear  with  im- 
portant results  on  the  topographical  section 
of  that  great  national  undertaking." 

"This  great  national  undertaking,"  as 
O'Curry  calls  it,  came  to  an  end  in  1842, 


50        A   GROUP    OF   NATION-BUILDEES 

owing  to  the  action  of  the  Government  of 
the  day,  which,  it  is  said,  feared  the  effect  of 
it  in  re-awakening  the  national  spirit  in 
Ireland.  Fortunately,  Government  bureaus 
are  not  the  custodians  of  the  national  spirit ; 
and  patriotic  private  effort  made  up  for  the 
loss  of  State  aid.  Two  movements,  the  one 
scholarly,  the  other  popular,  came  into  being 
at  this  time.  The  foundation  of  the  Irish 
Archaeological  Society  in  1840,  of  the  Celtic 
Society  in  1845,  of  the  Irish  Archaeological 
and  Celtic  Society  and  of  the  Ossianic 
Society,  in  1854,  gave  an  opportunity  to 
O 'Donovan  and  O 'Curry  of  making  known 
to  the  general  public  some  of  the  scholarly 
results  of  their  labours.  At  the  same  time 
the  Nation  newspaper,  founded  in  1842  by 
Thomas  Davis  and  Charles  Gavan  Duffy, 
as  the  organ  of  the  Young  Ireland  Party, 
willingly  lent  its  aid  in  popularising  the  new 
world  of  Irish  life  revealed  in  the  ancient 
manuscripts  of  Ireland,  and  in  giving  it  an 
emotional  and  poetic  setting.  The  poets  of 
the  Nation  naturally  sought  in  ancient  tra- 
dition a  spur  to  political  passion,  and  their 
poetry,  at  its  best,  glows  with  the  white 
heat  of  a  pure  patriotism.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  work  of  O 'Curry  and  O 'Donovan 
created  in  men  like  Ferguson  a  desire 
for  a  more  detached  and  literary  treat- 
ment.   And  here  I  should  like  to  make  a 


O' CURRY  AND  THE  IRISH   REVIVAL       51 

slight  critical  remark.  One  of  the  things 
which  we  must  admire  in  O 'Curry  is 
his  belief  in  the  intrinsic  value  of  Irish 
literature.  To  him  English  was  more  or 
less  an  acquired  language,  and  hence,  in 
rendering  Irish  sagas  and  poems  into  Eng- 
lish, he  was  in  an  inverse  position  to  most 
modern  translators — he  was  translating  from 
his  native  language,  Irish,  into  an  acquired 
language,  English ;  most  of  the  moderns 
translate  from  an  acquired  language — 
Irish — into  their  "  native  "  language,  Eng- 
lish. In  rendering,  therefore,  Irish  sagas 
and  poems  into  English  he  must  have  felt 
hov/  inadequate  his  versions  were.  It  is  a 
commonplace  to  say  that  even  the  best 
translations  fail  to  render  adequately  their 
original ;  but  let  me  say  this  that,  personally, 
I  infinitely  prefer  O 'Curry's  straightforward, 
if  old-fashioned,  versions  to  much  of  the 
smirking  preciosity  and  sophistication  of 
certain  moderns.  I  am  perfectly  certain 
that  Cuchulain  and  Queen  Maeve  would 
howl  with  anger  if  they  came  across 
some  of  the  modern  caricatures  of  their 
august  persons.  The  desire  to  improve 
on  the  original  is  to  be  found  in 
those  who  know  it  only  in  translation 
and  who  know  it,  on  that  account,  im- 
perfectly. The  growth  of  Irish  scholarship 
during  the  last  fifty  years  or  so  has  made  it 


52         A    GROUP    or    NATION-BUILDERS 

possible  for  many  of  us  to  read  the  Irish 
sagas  and  poems  in  the  original,  and  the 
result  is  a  return  to  the  belief  of  O 'Curry — 
the  belief  in  the  intrinsic  value  of  Irish 
literature. 


CHAPTER   VII 

o'cURRY's    vast    labours    on    IRISH    TEXTS 

From  1835  to  1842  the  work  of  O'Curry 
and  O 'Donovan  was  in  great  measure  di- 
rected by  the  requirements  of  the  Ordnance 
Survey.  The  results  are  to  be  found  em- 
bodied in  the  Survey  Letters  and  in  papers 
such  as  Petrie's  on  the  Antiquities  of  Tar  a 
Hill,  which  appeared  as  early  as  1837  in  the 
Transactions  of  the  Royal  Irish  Academy. 
From  1840  on  O 'Donovan  continued  his 
publication  of  his  editions  of  Irish  texts  for 
the  Archaeological  Societies,  his  Grammar 
of  the  Irish  Language,  and  his  monumental 
edition  of  the  Annals  of  the  Four  Masters, 
O'Curry  bent  himself  to  the  task  of  acquiring 
a  knowledge  of  the  whole  range  of  Irish 
manuscript  literature.  For  the  perfor- 
mance of  such  a  task  nothing  could  have 
been  more  favourable  than  the  work  which 
he  now  undertook.  It  was  felt  that  the  time 
had  come  for  cataloguing  the  great  coUec- 


o'cURRY's   labours   on   IRISH   TEXTS    53 

tion  of  manuscripts  in  the  Royal  Irish 
Academy.  The  publication  of  isolated  texts, 
chosen  without  a  full  knowledge  of  the 
actual  range  of  the  manuscript  literature, 
was  likely  to  lead  to  a  want  of  perspective. 
O'Donovan  had,  as  early  as  1836,  commenced 
his  catalogue  of  the  manuscripts  in  Trinity 
College,  but  he  left  it  uncompleted  in  1840. 
In  1842  the  Council  of  the  Royal  Irish 
Academy  employed  O 'Curry  to  compile  a 
catalogue  of  their  manuscripts ;  and  thus 
was  inaugurated  that  wondrous  task  carried 
out  by  O'Curry,  contributed  to  by  Owen 
Connellan  and  O'Beirne  Crowe,  and  com- 
pleted by  the  great  Index  Catalogue  of 
O'Longan,  which  lies  still,  in  manuscript,  on 
the  shelves  of  the  Royal  Irish  Academy. 
I  have  heard  from  time  to  time  egotistical 
editors  of  a  few  pages  of  easy  Irish  complain 
of  some  small  defect  in  this  gigantic  work, 
but  I  prefer  the  testimony  of  Mr.  Purton,  of 
the  Royal  Irish  Academy,  who  has  been  for 
many  years  in  daily  contact  with  it  and 
who  declares  its  accuracy  wonderful.  Some 
of  my  readers  are,  no  doubt,  quite  familiar 
with  this  catalogue,  but,  for  the  sake  of 
those  who  are  not,  it  is  well  to  point  out 
that  it  is  a  descriptive  one.  The  plan 
adopted  was,  in  the  first  place,  to  give  an 
account,  if  possible,  of  the  origin  and 
history  of  each  manuscript,  and  then  to 


54         A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

give  an  analysis  of  each  tale,  poem,  or 
tract  that  occurs  in  the  manuscript.  For 
example,  in  Volume  II  of  the  "Academy  " 
Catalogue  there  are  386  pages,  and  of  these 
225  pages  are  devoted  to  an  analysis  of  the 
contents  of  the  great  Middle-Irish  manu- 
script— the  Leabhar  Breac.  You  will  see, 
therefore,  that  such  work  as  this  entailed 
the  enormous  labour  of  reading  each  and 
every  poem,  tale  or  tract,  in  each  and 
every  one  of  the  manuscripts.  I  take  a 
particular  pleasure  in  thus  emphasizing 
the  greatness  of  the  work  of  men  like 
O'Donovan,  O'Curry,  and  O'Longan,  for  it 
has  frequently  been  exploited  by  others 
without  sufficient  and,  at  times,  without  any 
acknowledgment.  As  an  example  of  this 
I  should  like  to  point,  though  for  certain 
reasons  I  feel  some  diffidence  in  doing  so, 
to  those  peerless  specimens  of  facsimile  re- 
production of  the  great  vellum  manuscripts 
by  O'Longan.  Take,  for  instance,  the  fac- 
simile of  the  Book  oj  Leinsier.  To  this  the 
late  Dr.  Atkinson  prefixed  an  Introduction 
and  analysis  of  contents — a  good  piece  of 
work  though  not  altogether  his.  The 
raison  d'etre  of  the  Introduction  was  the 
facsimile  of  the  manuscript  by  O'Longan. 
One  would  have  imagined  that  O'Longan' s 
name  should  have  appeared  upon  the 
title-page,    but    the    real    worker    is    re- 


O' curry's   labours    on    IRISH   TEXTS    55 

legated  to  an  obscure  position  in  the 
tail-end  of  the  Introduction,  whilst  the 
title-page  tells,  in  no  modest  way,  the  legend 
that  the  work  is  "  The  Book  of  Leinster,*' 
et  cetera,  with  Introduction,  et  cetera,  by 
Robert  Atkinson,  et  cetera.  The  result  is 
that  I  have  seen  it  ignorantly  referred  to  as 
the  Book  of  Leinster  by  Robert  Atkinson. 
Somewhat  the  same  treatment  was  meted 
out  to  O'Longan  in  the  case  of  the  Leabhar 
na  h'TJidhre,  Leabhar  Breac  and  Book  of 
Ballymote. 

But  to  return  to  the  Catalogue.  There 
are  four  catalogues  of  manuscripts  in 
the  Royal  Irish  Academy — the  first,  techni- 
cally called  the  "  Academy  "  Catalogue  as 
it  deals  with  the  Academy's  original 
collection  of  manuscripts  ;  the  second,  the 
"Hodges  and  Smith  "  Catalogue,  dealing 
with  the  collection  of  manuscripts  acquired 
through  that  firm ;  the  third,  the  ''  Betham  " 
Catalogue — so  named  from  Sir  William 
Betham ;  and  the  fourth,  the ' '  Miscellaneous' ' 
Catalogue .  The  first,  the '  'Academy ' '  Cata- 
logue, O' Curry  commenced  in  November, 
1842.  It  consists  of  three  large  folio  volumes 
totalling  1,092  pages  of  closely  written 
description.  The  second  volume  O' Curry 
finished  on  the  12th  February,  1844,  adding 
the  following  note  :  "  This  ends  my  descrip- 
tion of  the  Leabhar  Breac  [covering  pages 


56         A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

527-752]  and  whatever  light  I  have  been 
able  to  throw  on  its  contents  it  will  be  seen 
that  I  have  not  spared  any  labour  or 
trouble."  The  third  volume  has  no  date. 
Concomitantly  with  the  writing  of  the 
descriptive  "Academy  "  Catalogue  O' Curry 
commenced  that  of  the  Hodges  and  Smith 
collection.  This  consists  of  two  folio  vol- 
umes, containing  519  pages,  of  which  Vol.  I  is 
dated  1843.  Finally,  of  the  five  folio  vol- 
umes of  the  *'Betham"  Catalogue,  O'Curry 
wrote  two,  amounting  to  561  pages.  Vol. 
Ill  was  written  by  Owen  Connellan  and 
Joseph  O'Longan,  and  vols.  IV,  and  V  by 
O'Longan.  The  "  Miscellaneous  "  Cata- 
logue, it  may  be  mentioned,  is  the  work  of 
poor  O'Beirne  Crowe,  whilst  the  great  Index 
Catalogue,  in  13  large  folio  volumes,  is  the 
work  of  Joseph  O'Longan.  I  trust  I  may 
be  pardoned  for  going  into  these  details, 
for  it  is,  I  believe,  the  only  way  to  give 
an  idea  of  portion  of  the  enormous  work 
carried  out  by  these  industrious  Irishmen 
of  a  past  generation. 

From  1844  to  1849  O'Curry  still  continued 
to  transcribe  and  translate  Irish  texts. 
Most  of  these  remain  unpublished  or  have 
been  made  the  basis  of  editions  by  later 
scholars.  For  proof  of  his  generous  aid  to 
his  contemporaries  one  has  only  to  consult 
the  Introductions  to  practically  every  work 


O'CURRY's    labours    on    IRISH   TEXTS     57 

dealing  with  the  native  literature  or  history 
of  Ireland  published  between  the  years 
1840  and  1862.  To  the  Grammar  of  his 
colleague  O'Donovan  he  supplied  illustra- 
tions of  Thomond  forms  ;  he  assisted  him  in 
the  preparation  of  the  text  of  the  Annals 
of  the  Four  Masters,  whilst  for  the  edition 
of  the  Leabhar  na  g-Ceart  he  transcribed  the 
texts  from  the  Book  of  Ballymote  and  the 
Booh  of  Lecan.  Without  the  assistance  of 
0*Curry  and  O'Donovan  men  like  Petrie, 
Todd,  Graves,  and  Reeves  would  have  been 
utterly  helpless.  "  Should  you  see  Mr. 
MacDowell  again,"  writes  Petrie  to  O' Curry, 
on  28th  August,  1855,  "  pray  remember  me 
kindly  to  him,  and  tell  him  that  I  am  getting 
on  with  the  second  volume — that  is  to  say, 
between  ourselves,  as  well  as  I  can  without 
having  you  beside  me.  But  in  truth, 
except  in  the  way  of  preparation,  I  can  do 
nothing  of  consequence  till  I  have  you 
again  to  aid  me."  To  bring  home  to  you 
the  kind  of  aid  afforded  by  O' Curry,  aid 
often  acknowledged  in  some  stereotyped 
phrase  in  an  Introduction  full  of  the  man's 
own  thought  and  work,  let  me  refer  to 
Adamnan's  scholarly  Latin  Life  of  St. 
Columba,  edited  by  Dr.  Reeves  for  the  Irish 
Archaeological  and  Celtic  Society.  The 
manuscript,  numbered  1106  in  Trinity 
College  Catalogue,   contains  the  following 


58         A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

transcripts    and   translations    by    Eugene 
O' Curry  :— 

1.  Life  of  St.  Columba,  from  the  Book  of  Lis- 
rnore,  and  translation. 

2.  Preface  to  the  Amhra  of  Columcille,  from 

Lebhar  na  h-Uidhre. 

3.  Preface  to  the  Altus,  from  the  Lebhar  Breac. 

4.  Story  of  Columba  and  his  work,  from  the 
Lebhar  Breac. 

5.  Story  of  Columba,  King  Brandubh  and  the 
devils,  from  the  Book  of  Lecan. 

6.  Wandering    of    Snedgus    and    MacRiaghla, 
from  Yellow  Book  of  Lecan. 

7.  Preface  to  the  Amhra,  from  the  Y.B.L. 

8.  Colmubcille  and  the  King  of  Alban's  daugh- 
ter, from  Y.B.L. 

9.  Story  of  Connor  Mac  Nessa,  from  Y.B.L. 

10.  Extract  from  Life  of  Diarmid  MacFergusa 

Cerrbheoil,  from  Y.B.L. 

11.  Death  of  Aedh  mac  Ainmire,  from  Y.B.L. 

12.  Legend  of  Inbher  Ailbhine,  from  Book  of 
Ballymote. 

13.  Vision  of  Adamnan,  from  Lebhar  Breac. 

14.  St.  Ruadhan  and  King  Diarmid. 

15.  Adanman  and  Finnachta,  from  the  manu- 
script of  Mr.  Mason. 

To  these  transcripts  and  translations  is 
appended  the  following  note  :  "  All  the 
above  were  copied  and  translated  by  Eugene 
Curry  for  Wm.  Reeves,  and  this  collection 
so  made  is  unique."  The  words  "  for  Wm. 
Reeves  "  are  omitted  in  Abbot's  catalogue, 
but  will  be  found  in  the  manuscript.  I  think 
that  this  gives  us  some  idea  of  the  material 


O'cURRY's   labours   on   IRISH   TEXTS    59 

which  O' Curry  in  his  off  time  passed  on  to 
men  like  Reeves,  and  by  means  of  which 
they  gained  considerable  reputation  as 
Irish  scholars  and  antiquaries.  I  could 
add  further  evidence  from  the  same  manu- 
script and  from  others  but  I  am  sure  this 
will  suffice  for  the  present.  It  was  at  this 
time  that  O' Curry  became  acquainted  with 
the  collection  of  Irish  manuscripts  at 
Brussels.  In  1840  there  was  published 
U Inventaire  des  manuscrits  de  Vancienne 
hibliotMque  royale  des  dues  de  Bourgogne, 
and  this  contained  a  list  of  Irish  manuscripts 
formerly  belonging  to  the  Franciscans  of 
Louvain  and  then  in  the  Burgundian 
Library  at  Brussels.  It  was  Mr.  Laurence 
Waldron,  M.P.,  of  Ballybrack,  as  O' Curry 
says,  who  about  the  year  1844  brought  the 
collection  under  the  notice  of  Irish  scholars 
in  Dublin,  At  O' Curry's  request  he  made 
transcripts  and  tracings  "  of  great  accuracy 
and  of  deep  interest."  In  1846  Mr.  Samuel 
Bindon  made  a  further  examination  of  these 
manuscripts  and  compiled  a  short  cata- 
logue, read  before  the  Royal  Irish  Academy 
on  May  10th,  1847.  These  accounts  were 
supplemented  by  those  of  Todd  and  Graves 
who  visited  Brussels  shortly  afterwards. 
Amongst  these  manuscripts,  chiefly  hagio- 
graphical,  was  a  perfect  copy  of  the  War 
of  the  Gael  with  the  Gaill,  and  of  this  manu- 


60         A    GROUP    OF    NATION -BUILDERS 

script,  lent  by  the  Belgian  Government, 
O' Curry  made  a  transcript  for  Trinity 
College  Library  from  which  Todd  edited 
his  edition  for  the  Rolls  Series  in  1867. 
One  can  discount  the  croaking  pessimism 
of  despondent  idlers  in  our  own  day  when 
we  remember  the  industry  and  generous 
idealism  of  these  Irishmen  whose  faith  in 
the  vitality  of  the  spirit  of  Irish  nationality 
not  even  the  depressing  years  of  the  Great 
Famine  could  destroy. 


CHAPTER   VIII 

O'CURRY    IN    LONDON    AND    OXFORD 

In  the  month  of  May,  1849,  O' Curry  was 
summoned  to  London  to  give  evidence 
before  the  Public  Library  Committee  of  the 
House  of  Commons.  It  is  worth  while 
recalling  the  figure  of  the  simple  Celtic 
scholar  who,  heedless  of  the  material  wealth 
of  the  great  Saxon  city,  bent  his  steps  to 
seek  amidst  the  manuscripts  of  the  British 
Museum  evidences  of  the  spiritual  greatness 
of  his  race.  There  is  a  restrained  dignity 
in  his  own  description  of  the  visit  which 
expresses  better  than  I  can  the  unostenta- 
tious enthusiasm  of  the  man.  "  I  deter- 
mined," he  says,  "  to  pay  a  short  visit  to 


O'CURRY   IN   LONDON   AND   OXFORD      CI 

the  British  Museum  which  I  had  never 
before  seen  ;  and  on  being  properly  intro- 
duced to  Sir  Frederick  Madden,  that 
learned  and  polite  officer  at  once  gave  me 
the  most  free  access  to  the  Museum  collec- 
tion of  Irish  Manuscripts.  Among  the 
volumes  laid  before  me  my  attention  was  at 
once  caught  by  a  thin  book  of  large  quarto 
size  in  a  brass  cover,  not  a  shrine,  but  a  mere 
cover  of  the  ordinary  shape  and  construction. 
On  examing  this  cover  I  found  it  composed 
of  two  plates  of  brass,  projecting  nearly 
half  an  inch  over  the  edges  of  the  leaves  at 
the  front  and  ends  and  connected  at  the 
back  by  a  pair  of  hinges  thus  giving  the 
volume  perfect  freedom  of  opening  on  a 
principle  not  much  put  in  practice  by 
ordinary  bookbinders.  The  brass  was 
rather  clean  and  had  a  modern  appearance. 
The  plates  measured  about  twelve  inches  in 
length,  nine  in  breadth,  and  three-eighth's  in 
thickness.  The  front  plate  had  a  plain 
cross  etched  on  it  about  eight  inches  long 
with  arms  in  proportion.  I  immediately 
guessed  that  the  book  within  was  not  one  of 
any  insignificant  character,  and  I  hoped 
indeed  that  it  might  be  some  one  of  the 
many  ancient  works  which,  I  well  knew, 
had  been  long  missing.  Full  of  expectation 
I  opened  the  volume  and  threw  my  eyes 
rapidly  over  the  first  pages,  from  which, 


62         A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

though  much  soiled  and  ahuost  illegible,  I 
discovered  at  once  that  I  had  come  upon 
a  Life  of  St.  Patrick,  Being  well  acquainted 
with  all  Irish  copies  of  the  Life  known  to 
exist  here  at  home,  I  immediately  found 
this  to  be  one  that  was  strange  to  me,  and 
it  at  once  occurred  to  me  that  it  was  a  copy 
of  the  long-lost  Tripartite,  Under  this 
impression  I  called  for  Colgan's  Trias 
Thaumaturga,  which  having  got  I  at  once 
proceeded  to  a  comparison,  and  although  I 
am  but  little  acquainted  with  the  Latin 
language,  I  soon  found  my  expectations 
realised,  for  it  was  unmistakably  a  fine  old 
copy  of  the  Tripartite  Life  of  St.  Patrick.'' 
During  this  short  visit  to  England  in  1849, 
in  which  he  and  Todd  found  time  to  examine 
the  Bodleian  collection  at  Oxford,  O' Curry 
compiled  the  descriptive  Catalogue  of  the 
Irish  Manuscripts  in  the  British  Museum, 
a  volume  of  519  folios,  and  containing  a 
description  of  160  manuscripts.  It  re- 
mained the  only  catalogue  of  these  manu- 
scripts till  Standish  Hayes  O' Grady  com- 
menced his  magnificent  one.  Red-tape 
never  strangled  anything  so  rich  and  rare  as 
O'Grady's  splendid  but,  alas,  now  uncom- 
pleted work. 

During  these  years  of  almost  superhuman 
labour  O' Curry  received  about  the  remunera- 
tion of  a  decent  artisan.     He  saw  around 


O'CUBRY   IN  LONDON   AND  OXFORD      68 

him    hundreds    of  nobodies  in  receipt   of 
rich    salaries    for  doing    next  to  nothing. 
A  £10  note  for  this  transcription  and  transla- 
tion, a  £5  note  for  that,  added  bo  the  meagre 
and  precarious  income  on  which  he  had  to 
support  his  young  family.    As  is  well  known 
O'Donovan  and  O'Curry  married  sisters  ; 
and  it  was  felt  by  their  friends  that  even 
at  the  eleventh  hour  something  should  be 
done  to  free  them  from  wretched  monetary 
anxieties.  O'Donovan  meditated  emigrating 
to  America,  when  the  establishment  of  the 
Brehon  Law  Commission  in  1852  helped  to 
retain    his    services    for    the    home-land. 
O'Curry  had  already  turned  his  attention 
to  the  great  Brehon  Law  Tracts.     As  early 
as  1840  we  find  him  transcribing  for  Trinity 
College  Library  Duald  MacFirbis's  (r/o^^ar?/, 
and  from  1849  to  1851  he  received  the  sum 
of  £30  from  the  Royal  Irish  Academy  for 
transcripts  of  the  Senchus  Mor,      One  of 
the  most  surprising  things  about  him  was 
the  rapidity  with  which  he  worked.    He  and 
O'Donovan  commenced  their  labours  under 
the  direction  of  the  Brehon  Law  Commission- 
ers in  January,  1853,  working  daily  from 
10  a.m.  to  4  p.m.  at  a  small  salary ;  yet 
O'Donovan    found    time    to    continue    his 
publications  for  the  Archaeological  Societies, 
and  O'Curry  to  make  numerous  transcrip- 
tions and  translations  illustrating  the  general 


64  A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

history  of  Ireland.    Though  acquainted  with 
a  large  mass  of  his  unpublished  manuscripts, 
I  am  unable  to  give  here  a  complete  list  of 
them.     It  would  be  out  of  place  in  a  work 
like  this,  but  until  that  list  is  published  any 
idea  of  his  work  I  have  given  is  very  in- 
adequate.  For  the  projected  edition  of  the 
Brehon  Laws  O'Donovan  transcribed  2,491 
pages  and  O' Curry  2,906.    Of  the  preliminary 
translation,  O'Donovan' s  is  contained  in  12 
volumes  and  O' Curry's  in  18.    I  do  not  wish 
to  enter  in  detail  into  the  unhappy  con- 
troversy  over    the   Brehon   Laws — a   con- 
troversy which  embittered  the  last  days  of 
O' Curry  and  O'Donovan,  and  created  some- 
what  of   an    estrangement  between  them. 
Anyone    would   admit   that  by   this  time 
O'Curry  and  O'Donovan  deserved  to  be  left 
a  free  hand  in  the  editing  of  Irish  texts.    In 
the  Ireland  of  that  day  they  were  without 
peers.     Yet  the  old-time  dodge  was  again 
tried  of  making  them  do  the  work  and  letting 
others  reap  the  glory.     Those  who  tried  it 
reckoned   without   their  host   in   O'Curry. 
O'Curry  was  now  backed  by  his  own  people. 
His   position   as   professor  in   the    newly- 
founded  Catholic  University  shielded  him 
from  unworthy  tricks  of  quondam  friends. 
The  position  was  simply  this.     An  attempt 
was  made  to  make  O'Curry  subordinate  to 
O'Donovan.    Dr.  Graves  gave  the  puerile 


O'CURRY    IN    LONDON    AND    OXFORD      65 

reason  that  O' Curry  did  not  know  Latin, 
but  O' Curry  retorted  that  what  was  wanted 
was  not  a  knowledge  of  Latin  but  a  know- 
ledge of  Old  Irish  which  "  had  baffled  the 
best  classical  scholars  of  Trinity  College  for 
generations."    This  move  failed,  but  Graves 
and   his  friends   were  more   successful   in 
getting,    as    regards    Irish    at    least,    two 
absolute  ignoramuses  named  Busteed  and 
Hancock  appointed  in  1860  over  O'Donovan 
and  O' Curry.     Their  treatment  of  O' Curry 
and  O'Donovan  was  that  of  two  pedagogues 
trying   to   prevent   two   small   boys   from 
"  copying."       The  whole  thing  would  be 
laughable  were  it  not  so  scandalous.     For- 
tunately  we   have   a    clear    statement    of 
this  wretched  affair  from  O' Curry  himself 
printed    in    the   Journal   of   the   National 
Literary  Society  from  a  manuscript  in  the 
possession  of  Dr.   Sigerson.       It  is  to  be 
regretted  that  O' Curry  lost  his  temper  with 
his   great    colleague   O'Donovan,    but   the 
latter  seems  to  have  submitted  too  tamely 
to  the  indignity  that  was  sought  to  be  in- 
flicted  on   them  both,   and  failed  to    co- 
operate with  his  distinguished  brother-in- 
law.      Nor  can  anyone  say  that  O' Curry 
had  any  objection  to  the  appointment  of  a 
competent  general  editor,  for,  with  the  in- 
sight of  genius,  he  wished  to  have  his  brilliant 
pupil,    Whitley   Stokes,    appointed  to  the 
6 


66  A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

post  or,  failing  him,  his  friend  John  Edward 
Pigott.  Had  Stokes  been  appointed  we 
should  have  had  an  edition  of  the  Brehon 
Laws  which  would  have  been  a  standard 
one  for  many  a  day.  From  a  letter  written 
by  O'Curry  on  May  12th,  1862,  a  few  months 
before  his  death,  to  Dr.  W.  K.  Sullivan, 
he  seems  to  have  practically  decided  to 
withdraw  in  disgust  from  a  work  hampered 
by  the  interference  of  ignorant  busy-bodies : 
"  It  would  be  highly  displeasing  to  me,'* 
he  writes,  "  to  come  into  angry  contact  with 
Sir  Thomas  Larcom  and  Dr.  Graves,  the 
ruling  spirits  of  the  Commission,  and  I 
don't  know  that  it  would  not  be  better  for 
me  to  withdraw  altogether  from  the  Brehon 
Laws  and  turn  my  now  hard-drained 
energies  to  something  else  of  a  quieter  and 
smoother  character." 


CHAPTER   IX 

PROFESSOR    IN    THE    CATHOLIC    UNIVERSITY 

Fortunately  for  O'Curry  there  was  to  be 
found  one  who,  before  these  harassing  trials 
came  upon  him,  had  recognised  his  wonder- 
ful powers  and  had  determined  to  give  him 
a  position  in  which  he  could  give  free  ex- 
pression to  his  inmost  convictions  and  full 


PROFESSOR    IN    CATHOLIC    UNIVERSITY    67 

scope  for  the  publication  of  the  fruits  of 
his   untiring   years   of   scholarly   research. 
I  know  nothing  nobler  in  the  history  of 
human  effort  than  the  attempt  made  by 
the  Catholic  people  of  Ireland,  crushed  and 
decimated    as    they    were    by    the    Great 
Famine,   to  establish  a   University  which 
would  resuscitate  the  best  traditions  of  Irish 
scholarship  and  win  a  hearing  for  the  claims 
of  Celtic  culture.    It  was  in  1851  that  public 
collections    were    commenced    throughout 
the  Irish  dioceses  for  the  purpose  of  estab- 
lishing this  University.     In  the  Autumn  of 
1854  the  University  classes  were  opened. 
The  rector  was  John  Henry  Newman,  and 
he   at    once    decided    to    appoint   Eugene 
O' Curry  to  the  chair  of  Irish  History  and 
Archaeology,    the   first    adequate    and    in- 
dependent endowment  of  pure  Irish  scholar- 
ship since  the  days  of  the  O'Clerys  and 
the  MacFirbises.     The  glowing  tribute  of 
O'Curry,  in  his  Introduction  to  the  Lectures, 
to    the    hearty    sympathy    and    attentive 
hearing,  as  a  member  of  his  class,  which  he 
received  from  the  late  Fellow  of  Oriel  Col- 
lege, Oxford,  is  well  known. 

If  proof  were  needed  of  the  ultimate 
solidarity  of  the  interests  of  human  cul- 
ture, it  is,  I  think,  to  be  found  in  the  fact 
that  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson,  the  greatest 
man    of    letters   in    the   England    of    the 


68  A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

eighteenth  century  lent  his  support  to  the 
scholarly  efforts  of  Charles  O' Conor  of 
Balanagar;  and  that  in  the  nineteenth 
century  we  find  the  greatest  master  of 
English  prose,  the  most  cultured  English- 
man of  his  day,  lending  the  whole  weight 
of  his  moral  support  to  the  efforts  of  the 
simple-minded  but  knowledge-loving  Irish- 
man, in  whom  he  recognised  a  kindred  zeal 
for  the  advancement  of  the  domain  of 
human  thought.  Here  was  no  cheap  sneer 
at  the  want  of  a  little  Latin  nor  yet  a  little 
Greek  !  What  a  contrast  to  the  Busteeds, 
the  Hancocks,  et  hoc  genus  omne.  In  the 
faculty  of  Philosophy  and  Letters  O' Curry 
had  associated  with  him  distinguished 
colleagues  such  as  Denis  Florence  Mac- 
Carthy,  T.  W.  Allies,  Aubrey  de  Vere,  John 
O'Hagan,  Peter  le  Page  Renouf,  and  my 
own  former  Professor  of  English  Literature, 
Thomas  Arnold,  whose  brother  Matthew 
expressed  his  appreciation  of  the  new 
movement  in  his  charming  Essay  on  Celtic 
Literature.  In  the  all  too  short-lived 
Atlantis  appeared  brilliant  papers  from 
these  distinguished  men,  including  one  from 
Dr.  Sigerson,  who  early  displayed  his  rare 
union  of  scientific  knowledge  and  literary 
power.  In  the  Atlantis,  whilst  0' Curry  was 
publishing  his  texts  and  translations  of 
the  Three  Sorrows  of  Story-telling,  Le  Page 


PROFESSOR  IN  CATHOLIC   UNIVERSITY    69 

Renouf  was  contributing  those  famous 
papers  which  were  to  include  his  "  note- 
worthy defence  of  Egyptological  science 
against  the  attacks  of  Sir  George  Cornwall 
Lewis,  and  which  finally  disposed  of  all 
objections  to  Young  and  Champollion's 
method  of  deciphering  the  hieroglyphs."  * 
During  his  last  years  the  demand  on 
O' Curry's  time  and  energies  was  enormous. 
From  1852  till  his  death  he  was  engaged  on 
the  work  of  the  Brehon  Laws,  spending  the 
summer  of  1855  with  O'Donovan  in  the 
British  Museum  and  the  Bodleian  at 
Oxford.      In  the  same  year  he  published 

*  It  is  not  without  significance  that  in  our  newly- 
founded  National  University  there  has  been  found  a 
place  for  one  who  is  likely,  if  we  are  to  accept  the 
testimony  of  men  like  Professor  Sachau  of  the 
University  of  Berlin,  to  maintain  the  reputation  of 
our  native  University  in  the  domain  of  Egyptological 
science.  I  refer  to  Father  Boylan,  Professor  of 
Scripture  in  Maynooth  and  of  Eastern  Languages  in 
University  College,  Dublin.  In  addition  one  of  the 
chief  features  in  the  constitution  of  the  new  National 
University  is  a  well-endowed  Faculty  of  Celtic  Studies, 
which,  we  trust,  will  continue  the  patriotic  and 
industrious  traditions  of  the  old  Faculty  of  the 
Catholic  University.  Finally,  a  notable  link  between 
the  two  Universities  is  found  in  the  fact  that  His 
Grace  the  Most  Rev.  Dr.  Walsh,  Archbishop  of 
Dublin,  the  real  founder  of  the  National  University 
and  its  first  Chancellor,  was  himself  a  pupil  of  the 
old  Catholic  University.  I  may  also  add  that  during 
the  existence  of  the  Royal  University  the  succession 
in  Celtic  Studies  was  continued  in  University  College, 
Dublin,  by  Prof.  O'Looney,  and  by  my  own  master  in 
rehua  Celticia,  Rev.  Edmund  Hogan,  S.J.,  LL.D. 


BOSTON  COLLEGE  LlBilAK^ 
CHKSTJS'UT  HILL,  MASS. 


70  A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

for  the  Celtic  Society  his  editions  of  the 
Battle  oj  Magh  Leana  and  the  Tochmarc 
Momera,  Early  in  his  career  he  had  worked 
at  the  now  well-known  Irish  Glossaries  and 
had  kept  in  view  the  publication  of  a  great 
Dictionary  of  the  Irish  Language.  In  1852 
a  Committee  was  formed  to  help  in  the 
publication  of  a  Dictionary ;  O' Curry  col- 
lected the  material,  but  before  his  death 
sufficient  funds  were  not  forthcoming  to 
warrant  them  in  going  to  press.  Meanwhile 
he  found  time  to  attend  the  meetings  of  an 
Association  for  the  Preservation  and  Culti- 
vation of  Irish  Music,  John  Edward  Pigott 
and  Dr.  Robert  Lyons  acting  as  secretaries. 
In  1857  we  find  him  touring  with  Dr.  Stokes, 
Dr.  Petrie,  Whitley  Stokes,  Samuel  Fer- 
guson, Margaret  Stokes,  John  O'Donovan, 
Martin  Haverty,  Sir  William  Wilde,  and 
others,  collecting  old  traditional  airs  and 
songs,  examining  antiquarian  remains,  and 
making,  as  Martin  Haverty  puts  it,  "a 
most  beautiful  speech  in  Irish  to  the  people 
of  Aran  assembled  in  one  of  the  old  Fir- 
bolg  forts."  During  the  years  1855-1856 
O' Curry  delivered  in  the  Catholic  Univer- 
sity his  famous  Lectures  on  the  Manuscript 
Materials  oj  Early  Irish  History ;  and  from 
1857  to  July,  1862,  he  delivered  his  course 
of  Lectures  on  the  Manners  and  Customs  oj 
the  Ancient  Irish.     The  first  was  published 


PROFESSOR  IN  CATHOLIC  UNIVERSITY     71 

in  1861,  the  second  in  1873,  after  his  death, 
with  an  Introduction  by  his  friend  W.  K. 
Sullivan.  Needless  to  say  they  received 
the  highest  praise  from  everyone  interested 
in  Celtic  studies  in  that  day.  They  de- 
finitely revealed  to  the  world  the  wealth 
of  Irish  manuscript  literature.  Accessible 
as  they  are  in  printed  form,  owing  to  the 
munificence  of  the  Catholic  University 
authorities,  I  am  dispensed  from  any  de- 
tailed reference  to  them.  Suffice  it  to  say 
that  they  are  in  reality  printed  guides  to 
the  enormous  mass  of  his  unprinted  tran- 
scripts and  translations.  They  have  been 
frequently  criticised  for  not  being  what  they 
never  professed  to  be.  O' Curry  was  not  a 
philologist  in  the  modern  sense  of  the  word. 
Further,  the  plan  of  his  work  put  it  out  of 
his  power  to  sift  to  their  origins  the  thousand 
and  one  traditions  that  jostle  one  another 
in  his  pages.  It  would  take  a  hundred 
scholars  to  adequately  deal  with  the  prob- 
lems that  are  suggested  by  the  material 
he  unearthed.  His  real  title  to  fame  is  that 
he  did  unearth  this  material ;  that  he  gave 
us  the  initial  key  to  the  solution  of  these 
problems  by  his  masterly  analysis  of  the  con- 
tents of  the  great  National  Manuscripts,  and 
that  he  set  an  example  to  his  countrymen 
of  tireless  labour  and  of  unbending  faith  in 
the  dignity   of  Ireland's  Past.    Nor  must 


72         A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

it  be  forgotten  that  with  O'Donovan  he  was 
the  centre  of  an  enthusiastic  band  of  fellow- 
workers  who  but  for  him  would  have  been 
powerless  to  penetrate  the  secrets  sealed  till 
then  in  the  ancient  language  of  Ireland. 

Amidst  the  trials  of  his  later  years  he  had 
the  sympathy  of  staunch  friends.  He  was 
a  frequent  and  honoured  guest  at  the  house 
of  Cardinal  Cullen,  whose  great  wisdom  and 
practical  advice  were  ever  at  his  service; 
whilst  he  won  the  affectionate  esteem  of 
Cardinal  Moran,  then  Dr.  Moran,  who 
cherished  his  memory  to  the  end.  From  the 
Oratory  in  Birmingham,  John  Henry  New- 
man wrote  him  kindliest  words  of  encourage- 
ment and  sympathy ;  in  the  preparation  of 
his  printed  Lectures  John  Edward  Pigott 
lent  him  an  unostentatious  aid  which  was 
little  less  than  filial ;  whilst  the  letters  of 
Whitley  Stokes  to  his  dear  master  or 
"  Aite,"  as  he  reverently  calls  him,  wound 
up  with  the  ever- recurring  "  Your  affec- 
tionate dalta  "  (or  foster-son).  The  interest 
which  he  took  in  the  future  editor  of  the 
Fdlire  may  be  estimated  from  the  mere 
fact  that  between  January  5th  and  July 
5th  of  the  year  1859,  Stokes  addressed  to 
him  twenty-six  letters  from  Lincoln's  Inn, 
full  of  queries  and  difficulties  and  of  thanks 
for  answers  and  solutions  generously  given. 
The  debt  of  Stokes  to  O' Curry  is  manifestly 


GEORGE    PETRIH. 

(From  an  Oil  Painting  in  possession  of  the  Royal  Irish  Academy. 


PROFESSOR  IN  CATHOLIC  UNIVERSITY     73 

great  indeed.  But  O'Curiy's  deepest  con- 
solation in  the  closing  months  of  his  life 
must  have  been  that  he  had  drained  in  the 
cause  of  Ireland  to  its  very  dregs  all  the 
power  of  the  great  intelligence  and  of  the 
powerful  physical  frame  inherited  from  his 
father  Eoghan  Mor.  He  delivered  his  last 
lecture  in  July,  1862.  On  the  20th  of  the 
same  month  he  took  part  in  the  procession 
at  the  laying  of  the  foundation  stone  of  the 
new  Catholic  University  of  Ireland  on  a 
spot  consecrated  by  the  labours  of  St, 
Columba  and  redolent  of  the  fame  of  the 
hero  of  Clontarf.  In  the  vast  assembly  of 
that  day,  composed  of  thirty-two  Bishops, 
and,  it  is  said,  two  hundred  thousand  spec- 
tators, one  may  single  out  the  simple  yet 
majestic  figure  of  the  great  scholar  who, 
more  than  any  other,  represented  the  un- 
dying spirit  of  his  race.  There  was  some- 
thing prophetic  in  this  his  last  public 
appearance.  The  closing  days  of  his  life 
were  spent  in  the  quiet  of  his  home  amidst 
his  beloved  manuscripts.  On  the  evening  of 
Wednesday,  July  30th,  1862,  he  complained 
of  a  pain  about  the  region  of  his  heart  and 
at  twenty  minutes  past  four  it  had  ceased 
to  beat  for  ever.  Ireland  has  reason  to  be 
proud  of  Eugene  O' Curry.  Fifty  years 
have  passed  away  since  he  was  laid  in  an 
Irish  grave.     No  stately  monument  marks 


74         A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

the  spot  where  he  lies  at  rest ;  but  his 
name  is  written  in  the  hearts  and  memories 
of  those  who  love  Ireland.  He  came  to  us 
from  the  Western  Sea  where  the  horses 
of  Mananan  beat  with  angry  hoof  on  the 
rock-bound  coast  of  Clare.  He  came  to  us 
from  the  dying  years  of  a  century  rich  in 
suffering  and  in  achievement.  He  came  to 
us  as  a  leader  in  the  Renaissance  of  Celtic 
Studies,  a  star-soul  in  the  East  to  guide  us 
to  the  magic  cradle  of  the  Celtic  West,  a 
leader  true  to  his  mission  to  the  end ;  and 
we,  his  pupils,  are  proud  of  him — proud  of 
his  accomplishment,  more  proud  of  his 
endeavour,  for  his  aim  is  a  greater  in- 
spiration to  us  than  the  calculating  scholar- 
ship of  lesser  men,  and  to-day  we  may 
leave  him  at  rest  secure  on  the  mountain- 
top  of  his  Fame  :— - 

*'  Here — here's    his    place   where    meteors 
shoot, 

Clouds  form, 
Lightnings  are  loosened. 
Stars  come  and  go  !  let  joy  break 

With  the  storm. 
Peace  let  the  dew  send  ! 
Lofty  designs  must  close  in  like  effects  : 

Loftily  lying, 
Leave  him — still  loftier  than  the  world 
suspects 

Living  and  dying." 


CHAPTER  X. 

GEORGE    PETRIE,    THE    ARTIST 

George  Petrie  was  born  in  Dublin  in  1789. 
His  paternal  grandfather  had  come  from 
Aberdeen,  and  his  mother  was  the  daughter 
of  Sacheverell  Simpson,  of  Edinburgh. 
Notwithstanding  his  Scotch  origin,  Petrie 
was,  in  sympathy  and  tastes,  an  Irishman 
and  a  Dublin  man  to  the  core.  Whether  it 
be  due  to  the  complexity  of  its  history 
or  of  its  race-elements,  our  Irish  capital 
has  a  charm  for  those  who  have  been 
bom  in  it,  or  have  come  to  live  in  it, 
which  is  all  its  own.  Danish  and  Norman 
and  English  elements  have  united  to 
give  it  a  temper  which  refuses  to  be 
insular,  and  the  Irish  element  insures 
its  fundamental  patriotism.  In  its  Georgian 
houses  rebels  have  been  born  and  bred,  and 
the  home  of  its  National  Parliament  is  a 
work  of  classical  beauty.  It  is  the  open  door 
to  the  Continent  and  to  England,  and  in 
the  eighteenth  century,  it  seemed  as  if 
English  and  Continental  influences  domi- 
nated its  intellectual  life.  It  seemed  to  have 
forgotten  the  remains  of  that  great  Celtic 
civilisation  whose  monuments  and  whose 
language  kept  their  quiet  secrets  amidst  the 
mountains  and  grass-lands  of  the  West. 

76 


76  A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

The  education  which  Petrie  received  at 
Whyte's  famous  school  in  Grafton  Street 
would,  at  first  blush,  appear  to  be  a  poor 
preparation  for  the  work  of  his  life ;  yet 
such  is  the  fructifying  power  of  real  culture 
that  it  was,  as  far  as  one  can  judge,  his 
love  of  an  English  poet,  Wordsworth,  that 
quickened  in  him  a  sensibility  for  the  study 
of  man  and  of  nature.  From  his  father,  an 
antiquary  and  a  portrait  painter,  he  in- 
herited his  love  for  antiquarian  study  and 
that  artistic  power  which  he  used  with 
such  effect  in  his  charming  sketches  of  Irish 
antiquarian  scenes  ;  but  from  Wordsworth 
he  derived  that  gentle  sympathy  with  the 
human  association  of  his  subjects  which 
lends  to  his  works  a  distinctive  quality. 
In  all  Petrie' s  sketches  one  perceives  the 
rare  union  of  the  artist,  the  antiquary,  and 
the  poet. 

It  was  fortunate  for  us  that  a  mind  so 
firmly  imbued  with  the  spaciousness  of 
fundamental  artistic  conceptions  should 
have  found  its  local  application  in  Ireland. 
As  a  boy  of  nineteen  years  Petrie  visited 
Wicklow,  and  the  Diary  which  he  wrote 
when  on  tour  reveals  how  wide,  from  the 
beginning,  were  his  sympathies — whether 
with  music,  antiquities,  or  scenery.  In 
1813  he  visited  London  and,  later,  Wales ; 
but  in  all  his  travels  his  mind  "  fondly 


GEORGE   PETRIE,   THE   ARTIST  77 

turned  to  home  "  ;  and  during  these  early 
years  his  artistic  studies  in  Irish  scenery 
and  antiquities  lent  to  otherwise  ordinary 
guide  books*  a  rare  distinction.  Petrie's 
artistic  work  is  characterised  by  delicacy 
of  detail,  truthfulness  of  drawing,  and  a 
refined  sensibility ;  the  want  of  depth  of 
tone  which  is  felt  in  his  work  is  due  in  him 
not  to  any  innate  inability  to  value  it,  but 
rather  to  that  analytic  tendency  of  his 
mind  which  was  to  display  its  power  in  the 
analysis  of  Irish  ornament  and  in  the  dis- 
covery of  the  origin  of  Irish  antiquarian 
remains.  In  other  words,  he  clearly  shaped 
his  artistic  work  to  meet  the  essential 
requirements  of  antiquarian  illustration.f 
In  addition,  his  sense  of  responsibility  and 
of  truthfulness  was  too  great  to  allow  him 
to  attempt  to  transfer  to  book  illustrations 
the  elusive  colouring  of  Irish  landscape  or 
Irish  skies.  Most  people  who  visit  anti- 
quarian remains  are  content  with  a  general 
and  cursory  examination ;  but  Petrie, 
through  his  artistic  work,  acquired  an 
intimate  knowledge  of  them  which  lent  to 

*  Cromwell's  Excursions  in  Ireland ;  Brewer's 
Beauties  of  Ireland ;  Fisher's  Historical  Guide  to 
Ancient  and  Modern  Dublin ;  Wright's  Tours  in 
Killamey,  Wicklow,  and  Antrim. 

t  See  The  Ecclesiastical  Architecture  of  Ireland,  etc., 
by  G.  Petrie.  Dublin  :  Hodges  &  Smith,  1846.  Pre- 
face, pp.  ix,  X. 


78  A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

his  opinions  a  singular  scientific  value. 
Perhaps  one  of  the  most  important  factors  in 
determining  once  for  all  his  antiquarian 
bent  was  his  tour  to  the  West  and  to  the 
Aran  Islands  in  1820-1821.  It  was  on  this 
tour  that  he  studied  for  the  first  time  the 
great  group  of  ecclesiastical  remains  at 
Clonmacnoise,*  which  his  pencil  and  his 
pen  were  to  illustrate  so  profusely.  The 
round  towers  and  the  exquisitely  carved 
Celtic  crosses  awakened  in  him  an  affec- 
tionate interest  which  only  ceased  with 
death. 

From  the  Shannon  Petrie  proceeded  to 
Aran — Aran  of  the  Saints — where  he  found 
an  inexhaustible  field  of  investigation.  But 
as  he  embodied  his  more  mature  observa- 
tions on  Clonmacnoise  and  on  Aran  in 
later  volumes,  we  may  be  permitted  to 
refer  the  reader  to  his  description,  in 
his  Diary  of  this  tour,  of  the  central  figure 
in  the  Aran  Islands  of  that  day — the  de- 
scription of  the  old  parish  priest,  Father 
Frank  O'Flaherty.  Petrie,  though  a  Pro- 
testant, was  a  man  of  a  most  tolerant  mind, 
and  Catholics  may  well  be  proud  of  his 
glowing  tribute  •}•  to  the  simple  virtues  of 
those  cultured  priests  of  long  ago,  who  min- 

*  See  the  excellent  sketch  of  Clonmacnoise  by  Prof. 
R.  A.  Macalister,  Catholic  Truth  Society  of  Ireland. 
I  See  Stokes'  Life  of  Petrie,  pp.  69-64. 


GEORGE    PETRIE,    THE    ARTIST  79 

istered  with  disinterested  zeal  to  the  spiritual 
and  temporal  welfare  of  their  poor  but 
devoted  flocks  :  "  Let  imagination  fancy,'* 
he  says,  "  the  qualities  that  should  adorn 
the  priest,  and  the  ideal  attributes  will  not 
be  much  unlike  those  that  really  belong 
to  Father  Francis  O'Flaherty."  We  are 
unable  to  give  at  length  Petrie's  splendid 
description  of  Father  Frank,  but  shall  merely 
say  that  nothing  finer  has  been  written  since 
Chaucer  drew  his  immortal  portrait  of  a 
perfect  priest. 

On  his  return  to  Dublin  with  a  portfolio 
of  sketches  and  a  memory  stored  with  vivid 
recollections  of  the  historic  landscapes  of 
the  West,  Petrie  felt  that  the  time  had  come 
for  the  foundation  of  an  institution  devoted 
to  the  forwarding  of  Irish  Art.  Already  in 
the  Dublin  Examiner  of  May,  1816,  he  had 
pleaded  for  the  establishment  of  a  School 
of  Irish  Art,  and  he  criticised  the  system  of 
training  in  the  schools  of  the  Dublin  Society. 
With  the  Royal  Hibernian  Academy,  whose 
first  exhibition  of  pictures  took  place  in 
1826,  he  was  intimately  associated,  and 
it  was  in  the  year  1830  that  he  was 
elected  its  librarian.  Some  of  his  most 
notable    pictures*    were  exhibited  on   its 

♦In  1829— "The  Round  Tower  of  Kilbannon"  (Co. 
Galway) ;  "  Dtin  Aengus  in  Aranmore"  ;  "  The  Elnight 
and  the  Lady"  (Scene,  Comeen  Dubh,  Co.   Kerry); 


80  A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

walls,  and  their  intensely  Irish  character 
did  much  to  prepare  the  way  for  the  growth 
of  that  Celtic  movement  of  which  he  and 
O'Curry  and  O'Donovan  were  the  pioneers. 

With  the  closing  of  those  early  years 
Petrie,  from  the  purely  artistic,  was  to  pass 
into  larger  fields.  As  may  be  seen  from 
his  charming  description  of  Father  Frank 
O'Flaherty,  he  wielded  the  pen  as  grace- 
fully as  the  pencil  or  the  brush.  His  style 
has  an  old-time  simplicity  and  delicacy 
which  will  appeal  to  those  whose  tastes 
are  not  chained  to  what  is  merely  modem. 
By  means  of  it  he  was  enabled  to  popu- 
larise his  learned  exposition  of  his  scientific 
methods  and  discoveries,  and  from  an  early 
date  his  pen,  as  well  as  his  pencil,  travelled 
in  company  with  his  thought.  His  desire 
was  to  win  over  Irishmen  of  all  classes  to  a 
proud  interest  in  the  historic  past  of  their 
country.  To  this  end  he  and  the  Rev. 
Caesar  Otway  founded  the  Dublin  Penny 
Journal  in  1832,  and  in  it,  and  later  in  the 
Irish  Penny  Journal,  he  and  O'Donovan 
placed  within  the  reach  of  the  ordinary 
reader  something  like   a   true   account   of 

"  The  Abbey,  Inis  na  m-beo,  Co.  Tipperary."  In  1831 — 
*'  Llanberis  Lake  "  ;  "  The  Eagle's  Nest,  Killamey  "  ; 
"  The  Glen  of  the  Horse,  Killarney  "  ;  "  Gougane 
Barra "  ;  "  The  Home  of  the  Heron,  Lough  Atree, 
Connemara  "  ;  "  Stone  Circles,  Caah  Hill,  Dungiven," 
etc. 


GEORGE  PETRIE,  THE  ARTIST  81 

the    historic   and  the  antiquarian  past  of 
Ireland.* 

Since  Petrie's  time  we  are,  of  course,  in  a 
position  to  establish  with  overwhelming 
evidence  opinions  which  he  put  forward 
with  reservation.  Comparative  Archae- 
ology has  revolutionised  our  views  and  made 
the  old  religious  and  race  prejudices  which 
cut  across  the  path  of  scientific  inquiry 
more  or  less  ridiculous.  Amongst  first- 
hand investigators  a  belated  specimen  of 
that  religious  or  race-prejudiced  type  may 
be  found,  but  in  really  scientific  circles  the 
species  tends  more  and  more  to  become 
extinct.  But  what  we  must  consider  is 
the  state  of  knowledge  which  Petrie  found 
around  him,  and  the  state  in  which  he  left 
it.  It  seems  to  us  ridiculous  to  mind  the 
biassed  opinions  of  an  historian  like 
Pinkerton,  who  spoke  of  "the  wild  Irish 
as  being  some  of  the  veriest  savages  on 
the  globe " ;  but  only  those  who  have 
studied  the  mentality  of  the  ascendancy 
class  in  the  Ireland  of  his  day  will  know 
how  truly  this  reflected  its  deep-seated 
prejudices.  Petrie  undertook  to  show  that 
Ireland  could  claim  her  share  in  the  progress 
of  European  culture.     To  do  so  he  per- 

*  To  the  Irish  Penny  Journal  O'Cnrry,  Wills,  Anster, 
Ferguson,  Mangan,  Aubrey  de  Vere  and  Carleton 
contributed, 

7 


82  A   GEOUP    OF   NATION-BUILDERS 

ceived  clearly  that  the  only  way  to  dispel 
the  clouds  of  ignorance  which  political  and 
religious    prejudice    had    created    was    to 
gather    together,    preserve,    and    elucidate 
every  monument  that  bore  witness  to  the 
past  culture  of  the  Irish  people.     Three 
classes  of  material  especially  lay  to  hand — 
manuscript  literature,  artistic  work  in  stone 
or  metal,  and  Irish  music.      The  founda- 
tion in  Dublin  of  the  Royal  Irish  Academy 
in  1795  had  already  provided  a  home  for 
the  housing  of  such  materials.    Up  to  1830 
it  possessed  a  few  but    important   manu- 
scripts— the    Book    of  Lecan,  the  Book  of 
Ballymote,  and  the  Leabhar  Breac;  to-day, 
thanks  to  the  efforts  of  Petrie,   O' Curry, 
O'Donovan,  Todd,  Graves,  Gilbert,  Reeves, 
and  others,  it  possesses  about  2,000  manu- 
scripts.    In  1827  Petrie  became  a  member 
of  the  Academy,  and  in  1829  he  was  elected 
a  member  of  the  Council.     He  at  once  set 
himself  to  the  work  of  collecting  and  pur- 
chasing all  the  manuscripts  available.     In 
1831  the  manuscripts  of  Mr.  Austin  Cooper, 
which  included  the  original  of  the  Annals 
of  the  Four    Masters,   were    secured,    and 
this  purchase  was  followed  by  that  of  the 
great    collection    of    Messrs.    Hodges    and 
Smith    and    the    large    collection     of     Sir 
William  Betham.    To  Petrie  the  language  of 
these  great  manuscripts  was  a  closed  book, 


PIONEER   OF   IRISH   ARCHEOLOGY        88 

and  it  must  have  been  the  desire  of  his 
heart  that  some  one  should  be  found  who 
would  open  to  him  their  secrets.  When, 
therefore,  on  the  evening  of  the  7th  January, 
1832,  a  young  man,  named  John  O'Donovan, 
presented  himself  at  Great  Charles  Street 
with  a  letter  of  introduction  from  Hardiman, 
Petrie  must  have  felt  that  at  last  the  man 
and  the  hour  had  come.  Three  years  later 
Eugene  O' Curry  was  discovered,  and  came 
to  join  O'Donovan  and  Petrie  on  the  staff 
of  the  Ordnance  Survey  ;  and  so  was  estab- 
lished that  unique  combination  which  was 
to  place,  once  and  for  all,  Irish  linguistic 
and  antiquarian  studies  on  a  firm  and 
scientific  basis. 


CHAPTER  XI 

PIONEER  OF  IRISH  ARCHEOLOGY 

When  Petrie  became  a  member  of  the 
Royal  Irish  Academy  in  1827  he  found 
there  the  nucleus  of  a  museum  of  anti- 
quities in  a  small  collection  of  stone  weapons 
and  implements  presented  by  the  King  of 
Denmark.*      Petrie  found  them  scattered 

*  These  constituted  almost  exclusively  the  begin- 
nings of  our  splendid  National  Museum.  The  present 
writer  has  been  acquainted  since  childhood  with  that 


84  A   GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

on  the  floor  of  an  upper  room  of  the  Aca- 
demy House.  He  set  himself  to  arrange 
these  antiquities  and  to  add  to  them.  In 
this  work  he  was  warmly  seconded  by 
Professor  MacCullagh.  In  1837  the 
Underwood  Collection  was  purchased.  In 
1839  the  purchase  for  one  hundred  pounds 
of  the  famous  Cross  of  Cong  was  effected 
through  Mr.  George  Smith  for  Professor 
MacCullagh ;  and  the  great  cross,  together 
with  the  magnificent  gold  torques  found 
at  Tara,  was  presented  by  Petrie,  on  24th 
June,  1839,  to  the  Academy.  Shortly  after- 
wards there  was  added  to  the  Museum 
the  collection  of  Dr.  Dawson,  Dean  of  St. 
Patrick's  (commenced  in  1832),  and  on 
this  followed  the  acquisition  of  the  Bom- 
nach  Airgid  and  of  the  collection  of  anti- 
quities gathered  by  the  Shannon  Com- 
missioners and  the  Board  of  Works.  Since 
Petrie's  time,  through  private  bequests, 
private  purchase,  and  purchase  under  the 

Museum.  Before  its  transference  to  Kildare  Street 
it  was  housed  in  a  room  known  as  the  "  Long  Room," 
in  the  "  Gold  Room  "  (now  the  Manuscript  Room), 
and  in  the  basement  (or  "  crypt  "  as  it  was  called)  of 
the  R,  I.  Academy  House,  19  Dawson  Street,  Dublin. 
After  Petrie's  time  it  was  in  charge  of  the  Librarian, 
Mr.  Edward  Clibborn  ;  later,  on  the  appointment  of 
Mr.  J.  J.  MacSweeney,  in  1869,  as  Librarian,  a  Curator 
of  the  Museum,  Major  Robert  MacEniry,  and  a  Clerk 
of  Council,  Mr.  Robert  Macalister,  LL.D.,  were 
appointed.  The  present  Curator  (in  Kildare  Street) 
is  Mr.  George  Coffey. 


PIONEER  OF  IRISH  ARCHJaOLOGY        85 

law  of  Treasure-trove,  the  Academy's 
Museum  of  Celtic  Antiquities  has  become  the 
finest  and  richest  of  its  class  in  the  world. 

On  each  antiquity  acquired  by  the 
Academy  it  was  Petrie's  custom  to  read  a 
paper,  and  these  papers,*  contributed 
throughout  his  lifetime  to  its  Proceedings 
and  Transactions,  form  no  small  part  of  his 
scientific  work.  Just  as  O'Donovan  is 
popularly  known  as  the  editor  and  trans- 
lator of  the  Annals  of  the  Four  Masters, 
and  O' Curry  as  the  author  of  Lectures  on 
the  Manuscript  Materials  of  Early  Irish 
History,  Petrie  is  popularly  known  as  a 
writer  on  the  Round  Towers  of  Ireland. 
But  the  work  on  the  Round  Towers  is  only 
a  chapter  in  his  great  work  on  Eccle- 
siastical Architecture,  and  this  latter  is 
but  a  fraction  of  the  work  of  his  lifetime. 

As  the  Academy  collection  grew  under  his 
hands,  Petrie  undertook  to  write  a  de- 
scriptive catalogue  of  it.  The  project  was 
thwarted  through  the  impatience  of  the 
Council,  who  did  not  realise  its  difficulty. 
Petrie's  conception  of  what  such  a  cata- 
logue should  be  is  admirably  summed  up 
in  a  fragment  t  which  was  to  form  a  portion 
of  the  introduction  to  the  catalogue  of  his 
own  private  museum  :  "  The  arrangement 

*  See  Stokes'  Life  of  Petrie,  pp.  438,  439. 
t  Ibid.  pp.  82-84, 


86  A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

and  descriptive  catalogue  of  such  a  collec- 
tion should  be  made  with  the  greatest 
possible  attention  to  the  principle  of 
chronological  succession."  He  further 
states  that  in  this  he  is  following  the 
example  of  his  friends,  Dr.  Thomsen  and 
Dr.  Worsaae.  Petrie's  friends,  the  Scan- 
dinavian antiquaries,  Thomsen  and  Worsaae^ 
were  the  founders  of  scientific  archaeology. 
To  them  is  due  the  classification  of  the 
protohistoric  period  into  Stone,  Bronze, 
and  Iron  Ages ;  and  Ireland,  thanks  to 
Petrie,  was  from  the  beginning  to  benefit 
by  a  knowledge  of  this  fundamental  classi- 
fication. Petrie  was,  therefore,  a  pioneer. 
Since  his  time  archaeological  investigation, 
owing  to  the  fruitful  use  of  the  comparative 
method,  has  developed  enormously,  and 
at  the  present  time  there  is  scarcely  a 
portion  of  the  globe  which  has  not  attracted 
the  attention  of  some  society  or  some  indi- 
vidual worker.  But  the  essential  principles 
of  the  science  of  archaeology  inaugurated 
by  Thomsen  and  Worsaae  in  Scandinavia, 
and  propagated  in  Ireland  by  their  friend 
Petrie,  still  hold  the  field. 

In  addition  to  antiquarian  objects  which 
can  conveniently  be  arranged  and  preserved 
in  a  museum,  there  is  also  that  very  large 
class  of  antiquarian  remains  which  of  neces- 
sity must  remain  in  situ.    We  can  transfer 


PIONEER  OF  IRISH  ARCHEOLOGY        87 

the  Tara  brooch,  the  Ardagh  chalice,  or 
the  cross  of  Cong  to  a  glass  case  in  our 
Museum  at  Dublin,  but  it  would  be  a 
difficult  feat  to  do  the  same  for  Diin 
Aengus,  the  Grianan  of  Aileach,  or  the 
Hill  of  Tara !  From  his  earliest  years 
Petrie  had  taken  an  affectionate  and 
scientific  interest  in  this  latter  class  of 
monuments.  To  register  them,  to  sketch 
them,  to  describe  them,  and  to  preserve 
them  were  among  the  chief  aims  of  his 
life. 

The  fulfilment  of  these  aims  seemed 
secured  by  the  establishment  of  the  Anti- 
quarian Department  of  the  Ordnance 
Survey.  In  1783  a  Trigonometrical  Survey 
of  Great  Britain  had  been  commenced,  and 
in  1824  the  House  of  Commons  recom- 
mended a  survey  and  valuation  of  Ireland. 
In  addition  to  mapping,  a  Geological 
Survey  was  also  recommended. 

On  the  appointment,  in  1826,  of  Captain 
(later  Major-General  Sir  Thomas)  Larcom, 
R.E.,  as  Director  of  the  Irish  Survey,  he 
decided  to  extend  the  scope  of  the  work 
so  as  to  include  topography,  history,  anti- 
quities, natural  products,  economic  state, 
and  social  conditions.  The  department  of 
Topography,  History,  and  Antiquities  was 
entrusted  to  Petrie,  and  he  quickly  gathered 
round   him   that   small   but   distinguished 


88         A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

band*  of  nation -builders  with  two  others 
of  whom — O'Curry  and  O'Donovan — the 
present  Httle  book  deals. 

In  the  Dublin  Penny  Journal  (1832-1883) 
Petrie  and  O'Donovan  contributed  article 
after  article  in  the  hope  of  quickening  the 
public  interest  in  the  history  and  anti- 
quities of  Ireland.  Those  who  love  know- 
ledge for  its  own  sake  have  ever  treasured 
and  will  treasure  these  pages,  so  enhanced 
by  the  delicate  woodcut  illustrations  of 
Petrie.  But  whilst  trying  to  gain  the 
ear  of  the  general  public  Petrie  was  not 
unmindful  of  the  claims  of  thoroughgoing 
scientific  research.  From  1833  to  1837 
he  wrote  his  Essay  on  the  Round  Towers 
(1833),  his  Essay  on  the  Military  Archi- 
tecture of  Ireland  (1834,  unpublished  and 
unrevised),  and  his  Essay  on  the  History 
and  x\ntiquities  of  Tara  Hill  (1837).  The 
Essay  on  the  Round  Towers  gained  the 
Gold  Medal  and  a  prize  of  £50  from  the 
Royal  Irish  Academy  ;  but  as  it  was  later 
included  in  an  enlarged  form  in  his  book 
on  the  Ecclesiastical  Architecture  of  Ireland 
(1845),  we  may  leave  it  over  for  the  present. 
The  Essay  on  the  Military  Architecture  of 
Ireland  was  never  revised,  and  is  still  in 
manuscript  in  the  Royal  Irish  Academy. 
We  may,  therefore,  pass  to  his  Essay  on 

*  See  Stokes'  Life  of  Petrie,  p.  89. 


PIONEER  OF  IRISH  ARCHEOLOGY        89 

Tara,  which  offers  an  excellent  example  of 
the  result  of  the  collaboration  between 
Petrie,  O'Donovan,  and  O'Curry. 

In  selecting  Tara  as  a  subject  for  treat- 
ment Petrie  was  following  a  line  which 
would  bring  his  work  quickly  under  notice, 
MacPherson  and  Tom  Moore  had  cast  a 
romantic  glamour  over  Tara  ;  and  if  there 
was  any  feature  in  Celtic  antiquity  that 
the  general  public  of  the  day  might  be 
said  to  be  familiar  with,  it  was  Tara.  Yet 
Tara  is  comparatively  recent  compared  with 
Cruachan  of  Connaught  and  Emain  Macha 
of  Ulster,  round  which  the  Cuchulainn 
Saga  centres.  As  a  place  of  residence  or 
of  sepulture  it  is  probably  very  old,  but  as 
a  centre  of  power  it  rises  into  prominence 
in  the  Christian  era. 

Only  those  who  have  read  the  lucubra- 
tions of  Vallancey  and  Betham  will  have 
any  idea  of  the  chaos  of  guess-work  that 
Petrie  found  himself  confronted  with. 
When  Petrie  came  on  the  scene  Sir  William 
Betham  dominated  the  antiquarian  section 
of  the  Royal  Irish  Academy,  and  when  the 
Academy  was  slowly  won  round  to  adopt 
Petrie' s  views  and  bestowed  on  him  its 
Gold  Medal,  Sir  William  withdrew  in  anger 
from  its  Council  as  a  protest  against  their 
action.  Bad  philology,  or  rather  guess- 
work   etymology,    was    one    of   the    main 


90  A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

causes  of  Sir  William  Betham's  far-fetched 
views.  His  a  priori  method  led  him  to 
support  his  theories  on  what  he  called  the 
"  affinity  of  the  Phoenician,  Etruscan  and 
Celtic  languages "  by  etymologies  which 
it  is  difficult  for  us  to  believe  could  have 
ever  found  their  way  into  the  Transactions 
or  Proceedings  of  any  learned  society. 
The  reader  will  find  the  neatest  and  most 
striking  example  of  the  contrast  between 
the  old  and  the  new  school  in  the  papers 
read  by  Betham  and  Petrie  respectively  at 
a  meeting  *  of  the  Academy,  on  April  24th, 
1837.  Betham's  paper  is  a  tissue  of  guess- 
work, of  which  the  following  gives  a  fair 
sample :  "  Accordingly,"  he  says,  "  we 
find  the  whole  of  Etruria  replete  with 
names  of  Pelasgic  or  Phoenician  origin, 
thus  : 

"  Tyrsenus — The  old  land — ci|a  f  e^n^oif . 

"  Ciris — The  swift  stream — cijAb  tiiVB^/* 
and  so  on. 

What  Petrie  thought  as  he  listened  to 
this  fanciful  outburst  we  may  imagine. 
When  Betham  had  finished,  Petrie  pro- 
ceeded, "  by  permission  of  Colonel  Colby, 
to  read  the  first  part  of  a  paper  On  the 
Antiquities  of  Tara  Hill,  being  a  portion  of 
the  memoir  to  illustrate  the  Ordnance  Map 

*  Proceedings,  R.I.A.,  1837,  pp.  63-70. 


PIONEER  OF  IRISH  ARCHEOLOGY  91 

of  Meath."*  In  the  printed  copy  of 
1839,  which  I  have  before  me,t  there  are 
208  pages.  Half  the  work  (up  to  page  104) 
is  devoted  to  an  account  of  the  historical 
events  and  persons  associated  with  Tara, 
the  remaining  half  deals  with  the  anti- 
quarian remains  on  the  Hill  itself.  Text 
after  text,  with  translation  into  English, 
is  given  with  substantial  accuracy  by 
O'Donovan,  illustrating  the  traditional 
history  of  the  hill-residence,  from  its  first 
reputed  founder  Slainge,  the  first  monarch 
of  the  Firbolg,  down  to  its  abandonment 
in  A.D.  563,  in  the  reign  of  King  Dermot. 
Leaving  aside  all  fanciful  etymologies  and 
theories,  Petrie  and  O'Donovan  place 
before  the  reader  in  chronological  order 
a  series  of  texts  with  a  suggestive  com- 
mentary which,  for  the  first  time,  clears 
the  way  to  anything  like  a  scientific  solu- 
tion of  the  problems  associated  with  the 
history  of  Tara.  Their  attitude  towards 
this  traditional  material  is  sufficiently  ex- 
pressed in  the  following  passage : — 

"  On  the  other  hand,  however,  it  would 
be  equally  premature  to  reject  these  tra- 
ditions as  wholly  fabulous,   as  to  receive 

*  Proceedings,  R.I. A.,  1837,  p.  68. 

•\  Presented  by  Petrie  to  the  Rev.  Dr.  Russell, 
Vice-President  of  Maynooth  College,  with  the  author's 
respectful  regards. 


92  A  GROUP  OF  NATION-BUILDERS 

them  as  real  history,  until  the  whole  body 
of  evidence  contained  in  the  Irish  MSS. 
shall  be  subjected  to  critical  examination, 
by  being  laid  before  the  public  with  literal 
translations."* 

From  King  Slainge  Petrie  passes  to  the 
reign  of  King  Cimbaoth,  beginning  in  305 
B.C.  As  is  well  known,  this  date  was  con- 
sidered as  the  earliest  certain  date  in  Irish 
history.  Following  on  that  of  Cimbaoth,  the 
reigns  of  Ollamh  Fodhla,  Tuaihal  Techtmhar 
and  Cormac  Mac  Airt  (a.d.  218)  are  dealt 
with.  In  connexion  with  Cormac,  the  author- 
ship of  the  Teagasc  Riogh,  the  Psalter  of 
Tar  a,  and  Cormac' s  claim  to  be  the  founder 
of  the  ancient  Irish  code  of  laws  are  dis- 
cussed. 

A  short  notice  is  then  given  of  the 
kings  intermediate  between  Cormac  Mac 
Airt  and  King  Laoghaire,  in  whose  reign 
St.  Patrick  came  to  Ireland  (a.d.  432). 
The  preaching  of  the  Faith  by  St.  Patrick 
at  Tara  gives  Petrie  an  opportunity  of 
discussing  at  lengthf  the  life  of  the  saint. 
Amongst  the  documents  published  for  the 
first  time  in  this  connexion  is  the  Irish 
text  of  the  famous  Hymn  of  St.  Patrick. 
Colgan  had  published  a  Latin  translation 
of  it,  but    the    Irish    text    is    given    by 

*  Petrie,  Essay  on  Tara,  p.  6.     f  Ibid.  pp.  28-94. 


PIONEER  OF  IRISH  ARCH-OOLOGY  98 

O 'Donovan  for  the  first  time  in  Petrie's 
work.  The  Latin  translation  gives  sub- 
stantially the  meaning  of  the  text,  but  the 
translation  of  the  opening  word  Atomriug, 
by  "At  Tara,"  is  erroneous,  and  destroys 
much  of  its  value  as  bearing  internal 
evidence  of  its  composition  at  Tara.  Atom- 
riug  is  in  reality  a  verb  with  infixed 
pronoun  meaning  "  I  invoke." 

Petrie  then  deals  with  the  compilation  of 
the  Senchus  M6r  and  St.  Patrick's  part 
in  it,  and  with  the  well-known  Feis  or 
Meeting  at  Tara  and  its  identity  with  the 
Druidical  festival  of  Beltine.  Finally,  he 
discusses  Dr.  Lanigan's  theories  about 
Sen-Patrick  and  the  Roman  Mission  of  St. 
Patrick.  From  the  Book  of  Lecan,  the 
Confessio,  the  Leabhar  Breac,  the  Liber 
Hymnorum,  the  Book  of  Armagh  (the  Tripar- 
tite Life),  the  Feilire  of  Aengus,  the  Irish 
Annals,  and  Colgan,  passages  are  quoted  to 
prove  the  historical  reality  of  Patrick  and 
his  mission. 

The  result  of  Petrie's  arguments  on  the 
question  of  the  Roman  mission  of  St. 
Patrick  is  admirably  summed  up  by  his 
biographer,  Dr.  William  Stokes  : — 

"But  this  much  may  be  said,  as  opposed 
to  some  modem  views,  that  however  the 
early  Church  of  Ireland  came  to  differ  in 
matters  of  discipline  from  that  of  Rome — 


94  A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

whatever  irregularities  may  occasionally 
have  occurred — it  was  an  offshoot  from  the 
parent  Catholic  Church  of  Rome,  similar 
in  piety,  devotion,  and  in  doctrine."* 


*  stokes,  Life  of  Petrie,  p.  116.  Dr.  William  Stokes 
and  Professor  J.  B.  Bury,  both  Protestants,  reviewing 
the  evidence  at  different  periods  and  from  different 
standpoints,  have  come  to  practically  the  same  con- 
clusion. Dr.  WilHam  Stokes  was  the  father  of  the  late 
Whitley  Stokes,  the  intimate  friend  and  former  pupil 
of  O' Curry,  and  of  the  late  Margaret  Stokes,  the  well- 
known  writer  on  Irish  antiquities.  Like  his  father, 
Whitley  Stokes,  writing  to  O'Curry,  expressed  his 
dissent  from  those  opposed  to  the  Roman  mission  of 
St.  Patrick.  On  the  other  hand,  Dr.  Todd  was  a 
strong  upholder  of  the  an  ti- Roman  claims  ;  and  it  is  a 
tribute  to  the  broad-minded  tolerance  of  O'Curry  and 
O'Donovan,  that  their  thorough  disagreement  with 
him  on  this  subject  did  not  prevent  them  appre- 
ciating his  services  in  neutral  fields.  It  is  not,  perhaps, 
generally  known  that  Father  W.  G.  Todd,  Dr.  Todd's 
brother,  was  a  convert  to  the  Catholic  faith  and  cor- 
responded with  Eugene  O'Curry  on  Irish  matters. 
He  worked  and  lived  on  the  English  Mission  for  some 
time  at  Chiselhurst,  Kent.  We  may  be  permitted  to 
say  here  that  the  fundamental  error  of  the  anti-Roman 
school  of  writers  has  been  to  adduce  "  particularism  " 
in  different  branches  of  the  Church  as  evidence  of 
separate  origin.  Liturgical  and  disciplinary  differences 
were  and  have  been  eagerly  seized  upon  as  evidence 
of  independent  origin,  and  hence  the  extraordinary 
prominence  given  to  the  Easter  question  and  the 
question  of  the  Celtic  Tonsure  as  matter  for  contro- 
versy. 


CHAPTER   XII 

THE  ESSAY  ON  TARA 

In  dealing  with  the  historical  associations 
of  the  Hill,  Petrie  relied  chiefly  upon 
O'Donovan.  Had  not  O'Donovan  opened 
up  to  him  by  text  and  translation  the 
secrets  of  the  manuscript  literature,  Petrie 
could  have  done  little  or  nothing.  In  the 
second  part  of  his  work  he  was,  however, 
to  take  the  initiative.  Petrie' s  powers  lay, 
as  we  have  already  said,  in  the  department 
of  monumental  antiquities,  and  in  describ- 
ing the  famous  remains  on  the  Hill  of  Tara 
he  found  himself  quite  at  home.  Yet  even 
here  O'Donovan  is  ever  by  his  side.  Toge- 
ther they  examined  every  vestige  of  the 
former  greatness  of  Tara.  Their  plan  was 
simplicity  itself.  In  the  first  place,  an 
accurate  map  *  was  drawn  up,  without 
reference  to  the  manuscript  literature.  On 
it  the  remains  then  actually  existing  were 
marked  down.  When  this  had  been  done 
all  the  documents  that  threw  light  on  the 
names  and  history  of  the  existing  remains 
were  collected  and  translated  by  O'Donovan. 
Amongst  these  the  chief  were  the  Dinn- 

*  Page  129,  Plate  6,  Trans.,  R.I.A.,  Vol.  XVIII,  and 
facing  p.  128  in  ed.  1839,  Dublin. 

95 


96  A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

seanchus,  a  poetic  and  prose  account  of  the 
origin  of  Irish  place-names,  and  Cuan 
O'Lochain's  poem,  Uem<M|A  cocoa  n^  ctilx^c, 
"  Tara,  first  of  Hills." 

Petrie  took  as  his  starting  point  the 
identification  of  the  well  Neamhnach,  which 
the  prose  Dinnseanchus  described  as  lying 
to  the  north-east,  and  as  supplying  a  stream 
on  which  the  first  mill  in  Ireland  was 
erected.  This  was  at  once  identified,  *'  as 
it  is  the  source  of  a  stream  which  has 
turned  a  mill  on  the  site  of  the  ancient  one 
to  the  present  day."*  Following  on  this 
came  the  identification  of  Uau  riA  Hi  5  or 
Rath  of  the  Kings,  and  Uau  L^egAipe  or 
the  Rath  of  Laoghaire,  and,  within  the  Rath 
of  the  Kings,  the  smaller  monuments  : — 
Ue^c  Co|\inAic  or  House  of  Cor  mac,  Teamur,'\ 
the  Forradh,  IDuttia  ha  ngiAtl  or  Mound  of 
the  Hostages,  *OuiTiAiiAbo  or  the  Mound  of 
Glas  Teamhrach,  and  the  Lia  Fail ;  then 
t^Au  riA  SeAriAit)  or  Rath  of  Synods ;  the 
Cross  of  Adamnan  ;  Teach  Miodchuarta 
or  Banqueting  House;  the  Sheskin  or 
Marsh  of  Tara  [UobAii  1fmv\  or  Well  of  Finn 
in  the  Marsh];  tlAt  gpAine  or  Rath  of 
Graine;  Fothath  Rath  Graine;  the  Rath 
and  the  Leacht  of  Caelchu,  and  the  well 
•'  Laegh."  J 

*  Petrie,  Essay  on  Tara,  p.  126.     f  C)nly  site  known. 
J  Site  marked  by  marsh-soil. 


THE  ESSAY  ON   TARA  97 

All  these  monuments  exist  to  the  pre- 
sent day,  with  the  exception  of  Teamur 
and  the  well,  "  Laegh,"  the  sites  of  which 
are  well  marked  and  known.  Having  drawn 
a  map  of  the  Hill  with  the  existing  remains 
marked  on  it,  Petrie  and  O'Donovan  pro- 
ceeded to  draw  a  second  map,*  on  which 
not  only  the  existing  remains  were  marked, 
but  also  the  sites  of  all  those  monuments 
or  features  of  which  mention  was  made 
in  Irish  literature. 

The  monuments  or  features  whose  sites 
were  identified  or  approximately  identified 
were  :  the  well  Caprach-Cormaic,  Cucz^^\\. 
Co^AtnAic  or  Cormacs  Kitchen,  Cnoc  bo  or 
the  Hill  of  the  Cow,  X^e^cz  Con  and  Lex5.cc 
Cecen  or  the  Grave  of  Cu  and  the  Grave  of 
Cethen,  LeAcc  ITlAine  or  Grave  of  Maine, 
l^e^cc  tn^CA  ITIoiAgtonnAig  or  the  Grave  of 
Mata  of  the  Great  Deeds,  'OutriA  Ax)Amn<Mn 
or  Mound  ofAdamnan,  the  Seat  of  Adamnan 
and  the  House  of  Benen,^  the  three  stones 
marking  the  grave  of  Mael,  Blocc,  and 
Bluicni,X  the  grave  of  the  Dwarf  (to  the  E. 
of  Mael,  Blocc,  and   Bluicni),  the  mounds 

♦Petrie's  Tara,  ed.  1839,  Dublin,  facing  p.  152, 
plate  7  ;  and  Trans.  R.I.A.  Vol.  XVIII.  p.  152. 

f  Near  these,  in  a  mound  or  bank]  near  the  church, 
were  found  the  two  gold  torques  now  in  the  R.I.A 
Museum,  Kildare  Street. 

%  Situated  within  churchyard,  but  not  marked  on 
the  map. 

8 


98  A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

called  Dall  and  Dorcha,  1T1ti|A  ha  -o-ciai  rCo^tiiA 
or  Wall  of  the  Three  Conspiracies,  Li-d.  n^ 
bpiAn  or  Stone  of  the  Heroes,  t)tiTriA  n^ 
m-bATi-Amtif  or  Mound  of  the  Woinen- soldiers, 
the  two  Claenfearts  or  Declivities,  'Pah  riA 
^CA^AbAt)  or  Slope  of  the  Chariots,  the  Cross 
of  Fergus,  the  Cairn  of  the  Leinster  Youths 
and  the  Cairn  of  the  Hy-Niall  Youths  (CA|An 
mAC|AAi'6e  LAigen  and  Cajah  rriAciAAi'oe  Ua 
tleiit),  'Oeifiot  UeAtr!|\AC,  Kac  CoimAin  mic 
CAelcon  or  Rath  of  Colman  son  of  Caelchu, 
'OuiiiA  An  Ltic-otiinn  or  Mound  of  Luchdonn, 
the  wells  Adhlaic  and  Diadhlaic,  the  sites  of 
which  are  clearly  marked,  U-pe-ouitiA  or 
Triple  Mound  of  Nesi,  Rac  ConcobAijA  THic 
tlefi  or  Bath  of  Connor  MacNessa,  CeAnn 
A^uf  THet)!  ConcuiAinn  or  the  Head  and  Neck 
of  Cuchulann,  Kau  A^uf  Sciac  CorjcutAinn 
or  Rath  and  Shield  of  Cuchulann,  LeAcc 
ItlAiL  A^uf  tTlToriA  or  Grave  of  Mai  and 
Miodna.  The  last  features,  the  identifica- 
tion of  which  is  dealt  with  by  Petrie, 
are  the  five  roads  from  Tara,  or,  as  the 
Book  of  Lecan  *  names  them,  the  "  five 
chief  roads  of  Ireland  :  the  Slighe  Dala  and 
Slighe  Asail  and  Slighe  Midluachra  and 
Slighe  Cualann  and  Slighe  Mor." 

Petrie    concludes  his  essay  with  a    de- 

*  Book  of  Lecan,  fol.  239,  b.,  col.  1  :  "  Coic  primroit 
Erenn,  .i.  Sligi  Dala,  ocus  Sligi  Asail  ocus  Sligi  Mid- 
luachra ocus  Sligi  Chualann,  Sligi  Mor." 


THE   ESSAY  ON   TARA  99 

scription  of  two  raths  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  Tara  :  tlAch  tTle^'obA  or  Rath  of  Maeve, 
about  a  mile  to  the  south-east  of  the  Hill ; 
and  Rath  Miles,  about  a  mile  to  the  north. 

This  mere  catalogue  of  names  gives  the 
reader  some  idea  of  the  wealth  of  life  that 
circled  round  the  famous  hill  that  com- 
mands the  rich  grass-lands  of  Meath  ;  but 
he  must  go  to  the  pages  of  Petrie  if  he 
wishes  to  learn  something  of  the  wealth 
of  legend  and  historical  tradition  with 
which  our  manuscript  literature  abounds 
in  regard  to  Tara.  Yet  what  Petrie  and 
O'Donovan  have  garnered  represents  but 
a  portion  of  the  otherwise  ungleaned 
material. 

The  Essay  on  Tara  established  Petrie' s 
reputation,  and  for  this  reason  we  have 
given  at  some  length  a  detailed  account  of  it. 
In  the  praise  which  Petrie  won,  O'Donovan 
deserves  a  large  share,  for  in  every  page 
his  hand  is  seen.  Meanwhile,  Petrie, 
O'Donovan  and  O' Curry  were  carrying 
on  the  work  of  the  Ordnance  Survey.  This 
work  entailed  enormous  labour,  and  to 
anyone  who  knows  what  original  work  in 
any  field  is  it  is  amusing  to  find  Sir  William 
Betham  charging  Petrie  with  dilatoriness. 

Throughout  his  lifetime  he  was  ever  in- 
quiring from  O'Donovan  or  O' Curry  about 
some    antiquarian    object.       We    possess 


100       A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

hundreds  of  his  letters,  full  of  terse  refer- 
ence or  searching  questions.  He  travelled 
north,  south,  east,  and  west,  and  pen 
and  pencil  were  continuously  occupied. 
Of  his  numerous  letters  a  number,  no 
doubt,  have  been  lost,  a  small  number 
have  been  published  by  Stokes,  the  rest 
are  in  the  Library  at  Maynooth  and  in  the 
Ordnance  Survey  volumes  in  the  Royal 
Irish  Academy.  In  the  Academy  are  also 
some  bound  volumes  of  his  unpublished 
sketches.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  at  a 
near  date  a  fitting  monument  may  be 
erected  to  him  by  the  printing  of  his  still 
unpublished  work. 

Nothing  could  exceed  the  friendly  spirit 
which  existed  between  Petrie  and  his 
fellow- workers.  In  their  letters  to  one 
another  there  breathes  a  sense  of  fellow- 
ship and  of  disinterested  love  of  their 
work  which  fills  the  reader  with  whole- 
hearted admiration.  As  an  example  of 
Petrie' s  correspondence  I  may  cite  a  short 
letter  written  by  him  to  Captain  Larcom, 
the  head  of  the  Ordnance  Survey  : — 

"  Galway,  20th  August,  1839. 

"  My  Dear  Larcom, — I  arrived  here  on 
Monday  night,  and  would  have  written  to 
you  yesterday  but  that  I  thought  it  better 
to  wait  till  I  had  seen  O'Donovan.    I  had 


THE  ESSAY    ON  TARA  101 

Wakeman  to  dine  with  me  at  the  hotel, 
and  I  afterwards  went  to  Hardiman's  and 
spent  the  evening  there.  Upon  the  whole 
I  have  a  good  account  to  give  of  the  pair. 
They  work  incessantly,  and  you  will  have 
in  a  few  days  the  result — a  dissertation  on 
the  antiquities  and  history  of  the  Aran 
Isles — of  singular  interest  and  value. 
O'Donovan  has  a  little  room  to  himself  in 
Hardiman's,  filled  with  historical  works, 
and  he  works  from  morning  till  two  o'clock 
each  night,  and  does  not  even  rest  on 
Sundays.  I  saw  his  letters  and  they  are 
admirable,  as  well  for  the  matter  as  for  the 
beauty  of  the  illustrations.  They  already 
amount  to  240  pages.  He  writes  at  the 
rate  of  twenty  pages  a  day.  He  only  sees 
Hardiman  at  meal  times.  Wakeman  is 
domiciled  at  Taylor's  Hill,  too.  They  think 
they  will  be  done  in  five  or  six  days  more. 
O'D.  wishes  to  know  where  he  shall  go  to. 
Kilkenny,  of  course ;  and  I  would  recom- 
mend you  to  let  Wakeman  continue  with 
him.    His  sketches  will  delight  you. 

"  Yours  faithfully, 

"  George  Petrie. 

"  To  Captain  Larcom." 

A  fundamental  error  in  estimating  the 
labours  of  Petrie,  O'Donovan,  and  O' Curry 


102       A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

is  to  judge  them  by  their  printed  works 
alone.  It  is  necessary  to  repeat  this  fre- 
quently, for  the  general  reader  cannot, 
from  the  nature  of  the  case,  become 
acquainted  with  the  enormous  mass  of 
unpublished  material  which  these  three  men 
left  after  them.  When  one  considers  that 
Petrie's  observations  extended  from  the 
Stone  Age  up,  we  may  say,  to  the  present 
day,  that  at  one  time  he  is  sketching  and 
writing  about  a  dolmen  of  the  Stone  Age, 
at  another  time  a  cinerary  urn  of  the 
Bronze  Age,  at  another  time  a  sword  of  the 
Iron  Age,  at  another  time  an  early  Christian 
stone  oratory  or  bee-hive  cell,  at  another 
time  an  Irish  Romanesque  church ;  when 
one  remembers  that  such  sketches  and  such 
accounts  are  scattered  in  the  pages  of 
periodicals,  in  letters,  or  on  stray  pieces  of 
paper,  or  in  manuscript  volumes,  some 
estimate  may  be  formed  of  the  hundred 
and  one  lines  of  research  which  he  opened 
up.  In  our  day  of  systematic  specialisa- 
tion his  method  of  work  may  seem  some- 
what erratic,  but  it  must  be  remembered 
that  he  was  a  pioneer,  and  that  the  circum- 
stances of  the  time  forced  him  to  survey 
the  whole  rather  than  specialise  in  a  part. 
Furthermore,  his  observations  were  made 
from  year  to  year  and  as  opportunity 
offered,  and  in  the  end  it  became  almost 


THE   ESSAY  ON  TARA  103 

impossible  to  co-ordinate  them.  As  an 
example  of  this,  take  his  collection  of  Irish 
inscriptions,  published  after  his  death  by 
Miss  Margaret  Stokes.*  Of  this  collection 
Dr.  Wm.  Stokes t  says:  "Dr.  Petrie  left 
behind  him  a  valuable  collection  of  ancient 
Irish  inscriptions  ranging  in  date  from  the 
seventh  to  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  cen- 
turies. They  are  outline  drawings  copied 
on  the  spot  by  his  sure  and  accurate  pencil 
on  sheets  of  note-paper,  backs  of  old 
letters,  and  such  other  scraps  as  he  had  at 
hand.  He  frequently  went,  for  a  few  days, 
on  trips  or  excursions  into  the  country, 
generally  in  company  with  some  intimate 
friends,  for  the  express  purpose  of  searching 
for  such  monuments  and  copying  their  in- 
scriptions. To  him,  indeed,  may  be  said 
to  belong  the  praise  of  having  revived  the 
true  reading  and  interpretation  of  those 
inscriptions  which  for  centuries  had  been 
regarded  as  illegible  by  our  best  anti- 
quaries." But  let  us  point  out  that  here, 
again,  Petrie  must  share  with  O'Donovan 
and  O' Curry  "  the  praise  of  having  revived 
the    true    reading    and    interpretation    of 


*  Christian  Inscriptions  in  the  Irish  Language ; 
chiefly  Collected  and  Drawn  by  G-eorge  Petrie,  LL.D., 
and  edited  by  M.  Stokes.  Vol.  I,  1872  ;  Vol.  II,  1878. 
4to.    Dublin  :  University  Press. 

f  Life  of  Petrie,  p.  410, 


104       A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

those  inscriptions."*  Petrie  had  intended 
to  write  an  essay  on  the  inscriptions,  as  is 
clear  from  fragments  still  remaining,  and 
from  a  blank  book  containng  drawings  of  the 
crosses  or  other  ornamentation  as  well  as 
of  the  inscriptions.  Apart  from  their  value 
for  general  history  and  topography,  these 
delicate  drawings  supply  the  materials 
for  a  chapter  on  the  decline  of  La  T^nef 
ornament  and  the  rise  of  the  interlaced 
Byzantine-Romanesque  design. 

Of  the  inestimable  value  of  these  records 
made  in  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  one  example  will  suffice.  In 
Christian  Inscriptions,  Vol.  I,  p.  39,  and 
Plate  XXXI,  Fig.  82,  will  be  found  an 
account  and  sketch  of  a  tombstone  at 
Clonmacnoise  bearing  the  inscription, 
Suihne  mac  Mailae  h-Umai  and  the  figure 

*  Life  of  Petrie,  p.  414. 

f  La  Tene :  a  proto-historic  Celtic  camp  near 
Neuchatel,  Switzerland,  where  finds  have  been  made 
with  a  later  form  of  spiral  ornament,  characterised  by 
double  lines  with  a  comma-like  loop.  The  ornament 
was  brought  to  Ireland  probably  by  Celts  of  the  Iron  Age 
{La  Tene)  about  300  b.c.  On  the  other  hand,  the  well- 
known  marvellously  interlaced  patterns,  generally 
considered  as  typically  Celtic,  came  to  Ireland  in  the 
Early  Christian  period,  and  gradually  supplanted  the 
La  Tene  ornament.  The  freedom  of  the  interlaced 
pattern  made  it  more  suitable  for  filling  up  large 
spaces.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  the  La  Tene  spiral 
makes  its  last  stand  as  an  ornament  on  raised  bosses 
and  small  circumscribed  areas. 


THE   ESSAY   ON   TARA  105 

of  a  Celtic  cross.  In  the  circular  centre  of 
the  cross  is  a  beautiful  and  typical  speci- 
men of  the  La  Tene  spiral,  and  the  whole 
design  points  to  the  finest  period  of  monu- 
mental art  at  Clonmacnoise.  It  was  a 
record  of  the  first  importance,  for  the 
person  whom  it  commemorated  was  one 
of  the  best -known  of  the  famous  scholars 
of  Clonmacnoise.  His  identification  is 
certain  from  the  fact  that  his  father's  name, 
Mael-Umai,  is  given.  References  to  him 
are  found  not  only  in  the  Irish  Annals, 
but  in  the  English  Chronicle  oj  Florence  of 
Worcester,  in  the  Saxon  Chronicle  and  in  the 
Annates  Camhrai,^  Professor  Macalister, 
whose  own  work  on  Clonmacnoise  entitles 
him  to  speak  as  a  first-hand  authority 
on  the  subject,  has  emphasized  the  im- 
portance of  these  monumental  slabs  as 
evidences  of  the  excellence  of  Irish  culture. 
Referring  to  this  monument,  he  says  that 
it  "  was  to  be  seen  at  Clonmacnoise  as  late 
as  1822,  and  was  drawn  by  Dr.  Petrie ;  it 
has  since  disappeared,  with  no  less  than 

*A.D.  892,  "Eodem  anno  Swifneh  doctor  Scot- 
torum  peritissimxis  obiit,"  Florentii  Wigorniensis 
Chronicon,  Tom.  I,  p.  109.  Ed.  Thorpe.  A.D.  891, 
"  1  Swifneh  se  betsta  lareow  pe  on  Scottom  waes 
gefor,"  i.e.  "  Suibne  the  best  scholar  of  the  Irish  died," 
Saxon  Chronicle.  A.D.  889,  "  Suibn  Scottorum 
sapientissimus  obiit,"  "  Suibne  wisest  of  the  Irish 
died,"  Annates  Cambrai,  p.  15.  Ed.  J.  WilHams  ab 
Ithel. 


106       A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

sixty-four  others,  of  which  records  are 
preserved,  and  what  has  become  of  it  no 
one  can  tell."*  We  may  rejoice  to-day 
that  the  industry  and  patriotic  zeal  of 
Petrie  and  his  fellow-workers  have  placed 
the  record  of  them  out  of  the  reach  of  de- 
struction, but  the  loss  of  the  monuments 
themselves  is  a  lasting  disgrace. 

Petrie  himself  was  fully  alive  to  the  ne- 
cessity of  popularising  his  views  on  Irish 
archaeology.  As  we  have  seen,  he  and 
O'Donovan  wrote  article  after  article  in 
the  Dublin  Penny  Journal  of  1832-1833, 
and  in  1840  they  returned  to  this  work  in 
a  new  venture — the  Irish  Penny  Journal. 
Petrie  illustrates  his  articles  with  charming 
wood-cuts,  which  add  much  to  the  value 
of  this  famous  magazine. 

Meanwhile  the  work  on  the  Ordnance 
Survey  was  drawing  to  a  close.  One  volume, 
that  on  Londonderry,  was  published  in 
1839,  and  was  hailed  with  universal  praise. 
The  Survey  had  banded  together  Petrie, 
O' Curry,  and  O'Donovan  in  a  common 
cause  ;  it  had  provided  them  with  a  small 
income  which  barely  left  them  free  to  pursue 
their  disinterested  and  highly  intellectual 
pursuits,  and  common  sense  would  have 
persuaded    any    paternal    Government    to 

*  Cluain  Maccu  Nois  (Clonmacnois).  By  R.  A. 
Macalister,  M.  A.  Dublin :  Catholic  Truth  Soc.  of  Ireland. 


THE   ROUND   TOWERS  107 

continue  them  in  their  work.  But,  not- 
withstanding the  representations  of  the 
most  enlightened  men  of  the  day  in  Ireland, 
the  grant  to  the  Topographical  and  Archae- 
ological Department  was  withdrawn,  and 
the  three  great  scholars  were  left  hence- 
forth to  fend  for  themselves.  As  we  shall 
see,  neither  O'Curry  nor  O'Donovan  ceased 
from  their  labours ;  on  the  contrary,  freed 
from  official  duties,  they  betook  themselves 
to  the  composition  and  editing  of  those 
works  by  which  they  are  best  known,  and 
in  this  light  we  may  not  regret  the  freedom 
which  came  to  them  at  this  time.  Petrie,  also 
finding  himself  free,  turned  to  the  arrange- 
ment and  publication  of  the  great  mass  of 
material  which  had  during  these  years  (up 
to  1842)  accumulated  under  his  hand. 


CHAPTER   XIII 

petrie' S    WORK    ON    THE    ROUND    TOWERS 

In  1883,  as  we  have  seen,  Petrie  won  a 
Gold  Medal  and  a  prize  of  fifty  pounds 
offered  by  the  Royal  Irish  Academy  for  an 
Essay  on  the  Origin  and  Uses  of  the  Round 
Towers  of  Ireland.  These  striking  monu- 
ments had  awakened  much  antiquarian 
curiosity,  and  men  like  Vallancey,  Betham, 


108        A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

O'Brien,  John  Windele  and  the  other  mem- 
bers of  the  South  Munster  Archaeological 
Society  had  put  forward  theories  which 
Petrie  considered  wanting  in  scientific 
proof.  Since  1833  he  had  acquired  an 
enormous  mass  of  material  bearing  on 
ecclesiastical  antiquities,  and,  freed  from 
the  Survey  work,  he  determined  to  present 
it  to  the  public  in  a  comprehensive  form 
as  an  amplification  of  his  original  Essay 
on  the  Round  Towers.  "  For  this  ampli- 
fication of  my  original  Essay,"  he  says, 
"  into  a  work  of  great  national  scope,  I 
am  alone  answerable ;  and  whatever  may 
be  the  faults  found  with  its  execution,  I 
trust  the  Academy  and  the  Public  gener- 
ally will  give  me  credit,  at  least,  for  the 
motives  which  influenced  me  in  thus  ex- 
tending the  field  of  my  enquiries,  and  I 
believe  that  I  was  actuated  solely  to  under- 
take this  additional  labour  by  an  ardent 
desire  to  rescue  the  antiquities  of  my  native 
country  from  unmerited  oblivion,  and 
give  them  their  just  place  among  those  of 
the  old  Christian  nations  of  Europe."* 

*  Preface,  p.  v,  The  Ecclesiastical  Architecture  of 
Ireland  Anterior  to  the  Anglo-Norman  Invasion^ 
Comprising  an  Essay  on  the  Origin  and  Uses  of  the 
Round  Towers  of  Ireland,  which  obtained  the  Gold 
Medal  and  Prize  of  the  Royal  Irish  Academy.  By 
George  Petrie,  R.H.A.,  V.P.R.I.A.  (2nd  Ed.)  Dublin  : 
Hodges  &  Smith,  Grafton  Street.    MDCCCXLV. 


THE    ROUND    TOWERS  109 

This  work  of  Petrie's  was  epoch-making. 
Its  establishment  and  use  of  scientific  cri- 
teria give  him  the  right  to  be  considered  the 
founder  of  a  school  which  marks  a  new  era 
in  antiquarian  work.  General  Vallancey  has 
been  described  as  the  founder  of  the  school 
to  which  Petrie,  O'Donovan,  and  O'Curiy 
belonged.  Nothing  could  be  further  from 
the  truth.  No  one  wishes  to  rob  Vallancey, 
Betham,  and  others  of  their  claim  to  a  due 
meed  of  praise  for  having  taken  an  interest 
in  the  language  and  antiquities  of  Ireland ; 
but  in  the  department  of  knowledge  in 
which  they  and  Petrie  encountered  one 
another,  their  standpoint  was  as  different 
from  his  as  would  be  that  of  a  medieval 
astrologer  from  that  of  Copernicus  or 
Galileo.  Only  a  mistaken  and  almost 
meaninglessly  comprehensive  application 
of  the  word  "  school "  could  justify  such 
a  use  of  it. 

Petrie  sums  up  the  results  of  his  studies 
on  the  Round  Towers  in  the  following 
conclusions : — 

I.  That  the  Towers  are  of  Christian  and 
ecclesiastical  origin  and  were  erected  at 
various  periods  between  the  fifth  and  thir- 
teenth centuries. 

II.  That  they  were  designed  to  answer, 
at  least,  a  twofold  use,  namely,  to  serve 
as   belfries,    and   as   keeps,    or   places   of 


110       A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

strength,  in  which  the  sacred  utensils, 
books,  relics,  and  other  valuables  were 
deposited,  and  into  which  the  ecclesiastics 
to  whom  they  belonged  could  retire  for 
security  in  case  of  sudden  predatory  attack. 

III.  That  they  were  probably  also  used, 
when  occasion  required,  as  beacons  and 
watch-towers. 

These  conclusions,  which  have  been 
already  advocated  separately  by  many 
distinguished  antiquaries  —  among  whom 
are  Molyneux,  Ledwich,  Pinkerton,  Sir 
Walter  Scott,  Montmorenci,  Brewer,  and 
Otway — will  be  proved  by  the  following 
evidences : — 

For  the  First  Conclusion  (I),  namely, 
that  the  Towers  are  of  Christian  origin  : 

1.  The  Towers  are  never  found  uncon- 
nected with  ancient  ecclesiastical  foimda- 
tions. 

2.  Their  architectural  styles  exhibit  no 
features  or  peculiarities  not  equally  found 
in  the  original  churches  with  which  they 
are  locally  connected,  when  such  remain. 

3.  On  several  of  them  Christian  emblems 
are  observable,  and  others  display  in  the 
details  a  style  of  architecture  universally 
acknowledged  to  be  of  Christian  origin. 

4.  They  possess,  invariably,  architec- 
tural features  not  found  in  any  buildings  in 
Ireland  ascertained  to  be  of  Pagan  times. 


THE    ROUND    TOWERS  111 

For  the  Second  Conclusion  (II),  namely, 
that  they  were  intended  to  serve  the 
double  purpose  of  belfries  and  keeps, 
or  castles,  for  the  uses  already  specified  : 

1.  Their  architectural  construction,  as 
will  appear,  eminently  favours  this  con- 
elusion. 

2.  A  variety  of  passages,  extracted  from 
our  annals  and  other  authentic  documents, 
will  prove  that  they  were  constantly  applied 
to  both  these  purposes. 

For  the  Third  Conclusion  (III),  namely, 
that  they  may  have  also  been  occasionally 
used  as  beacons  and  watch-towers  : 

1.  There  are  some  historical  evidences 
which  render  such  an  hypothesis  extremely 
probable. 

2.  The  necessity  which  must  have  existed 
in  early  Christian  times  for  such  beacons 
and  watch-towers,  and  the  perfect  fitness 
of  the  Round  Towers  to  answer  such  pur- 
poses, will  strongly  support  this  con- 
clusion. 

These  conclusions — or,  at  least  such  of 
them  as  presume  the  Towers  to  have  had 
a  Christian  origin,  and  to  have  served  the 
purpose  of  a  belfry — will  be  further  cor- 
roborated by  the  uniform  and  concurrent 
tradition  of  the  country,  and,  above  all,  by 
authentic  evidences  which  shall  be  adduced, 
relative  to  the  erection  of  several  of  the 


112        A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

Towers,  with  the  names  and  eras  of  their 
founders.* 

Up  to  Petrie's  time  the  suggested  origins 
of  the  Round  Towers  divided  themselves 
into  three  classes  :  Danish,  Eastern,  and 
Christian.  The  popular  habit  of  ascribing 
early  or  pre-historic  monuments  to  the 
Danes  f  is  well  known  to  every  Irish  anti- 
quary. Stone  Age,  Bronze  Age,  Iron  Age, 
and  Christian  monuments,  the  use  of  which 
were  not  well  determined,  were  frequently 
set  down  as  of  Danish  origin. J 

The  theory  of  the  Eastern  origin  of 
the  Round  Towers  originated,  as  Petrie 
states,  "  in  the  fanciful  brain  of  General 
Vallancey."  Vallancey  supported  his  views 
by  parallels  between  "  the  fire-towers  of 
the  Persians  and  the  Irish  Round  Towers," 
and  by  fanciful  etymological  resemblances 
between  Irish  and  Oriental  languages. 
Sir   William    Betham's  theory  Petrie  dis- 

*  Petrie,  Eccles.  Architecture,  pp.  78  et  seq. 

f  The  Danish  origin  of  the  Round  Towers  was 
advocated  by  Peter  Walsh  in  his  Prospect  of  Ireland, 
1684,  pp.  416,  417  ;  Dr.  Molyneux  in  Natural 
History  of  Ireland  by  Boate  and  Molyneux,  pp.  210, 
211  ;  and  Ledwich,  Antiquities  (2nd  Ed.),  pp.  158, 
169,  etc. 

X  The  approximate  dates  of  these  Ages  in  the  Irish 
area  will  show  how  ridiculous  these  ascriptions  were. 
The  Stone  Age  ends  about  1300  B.C.  ;  the  Bronze 
Age  extends  from  about  1300  B.C.  to  about  500  b.o.  ; 
the  Iron  Age  from  about  600  B.C.  into  the  Christian 
Era. 


THE    ROUND    TOWERS  118 

misses  as  unsupported  by  evidence  worthy 
of  refutation.  With  those  who  maintained 
the  Christian  origin  of  the  Round  Towers 
Petrie  was  in  general  agreement.  He 
differed  from  them  on  the  question  of  their 
exclusive  use  or  uses. 

As  in  his  work  on  Tara,  Petrie  in  his 
Essay  on  the  Round  Towers,  adopted  a 
simple  yet  scientific  method.  Two  main 
classes  of  evidence  were  examined,  namely, 
(1)  the  monuments  themselves ;  (2)  the 
references  to  them  in  the  manuscript 
literature.  But  before  discussing  his 
application  of  his  method  it  is  not  un- 
necessary in  a  popular  exposition  to  make 
one  or  two  things  clear.  In  the  first  place, 
the  scope  of  Petrie' s  enquiry  did  not 
extend  to  the  ultimate  origin  of  the  archi- 
tectural form  of  building  known  as  the 
Round  Tower.  The  history  of  the  evolu- 
tion of  the  Irish  Round  Tower  belongs 
to  Comparative  Archaeology ;  and  Petrie, 
wisely  enough,  felt  that  he  had  quite  enough 
to  do  with  the  study  of  the  restricted 
Irish  area.  His  excursions  into  Compara- 
tive Archaeology  are  rather  of  a  negative 
and  destructive  character,  undertaken  with 
the  purpose  of  stopping  the  hasty  general- 
isations of  Vallancey  and  others.  But 
when  he  sees  his  way  clearly  and  scienti- 
fically, as  in  the  proto-historic  origin  of 
9 


114       A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

the  beehive  cells,  or  the  Christian  origin  of 
the  quadrangular  form  and  upright  walls 
of  early  Christian  churches  in  Ireland,  he 
shows  us  that,  had  he  lived  in  our  day,  he 
would  be  a  pioneer  in  the  most  up-to-date 
comparative  work.  In  the  second  place, 
guess-work  may,  by  mere  accident,  hit 
upon  a  solution  which  is  true,  but  in 
ninety-nine  per  cent,  of  its  results  it  will 
be  wrong. 

The  Comparative  Archaeology  and  the 
Comparative  Philology  of  Vallancey, 
Betham,  and  the  rest  are  based  on  the 
fallacious  principle  of  taking  general  or 
partial  and  superficial  resemblances  as  a 
proof  of  unity  of  origin ;  and  it  is  the 
adoption  of  this  principle  which  vitiates 
their  work,  and  leads  to  the  monstrous 
etymologies  which  stud  their  pages.  The 
filiation  between  East  and  West,  which  is 
being  brought  about  by  modern  scientific 
Archaeology,  may  appear  to  have  a  kind 
of  resemblance  to  the  guess-work  of  the 
school  of  Vallancey,  but  it  is  in  reality  a 
distinct  and  independent  result  attained 
by  a  method  which  is  the  very  negation 
of  his  method.  Even  in  our  day  it  is  not 
out  of  place  to  issue  a  note  of  warning. 
Popular  manuals  on  Archaeology,  Ethno- 
logy, Anthropology,  and,  indeed,  on  many 
other  sciences,  are  placing  before  the  public 


THE    ROUND    TOWERS  115 

mind  tentative  theories  as  almost  certain 
facts.  The  wonderful  excavations  in  Crete 
and  in  the  JEgean  generally  have  opened 
up  a  new  world  of  fact ;  but  it  is  well  to 
point  out  that  many  of  the  theories  based 
upon  these  facts  are  more  or  less  tentative. 
For  example,  there  is  a  decided  tendency 
to  refer  to  the  .Egean  area  as  a  centre  of 
origin,  when  it  may  well  be  merely  a  focus 
of  result.  Fortunately  scientific  voices  are 
being  raised  here  and  there  in  warning 
against  this  over-attractive  theory.  What 
we  want  is  more  spade  work.  It  must  be 
remembered  that  we  are  only  at  the  begin- 
ning of  an  age  marked  by  the  develop- 
ment of  the  science  of  origins ;  and  the 
scholar  is  wanting  in  a  sense  of  responsi- 
bility who  does  not  make  it  clear  to  the 
general  public  at  what  point  his  facts  end 
and  his  theories  begin.  Many  an  attractive 
and  facile  theory  must  have  presented  itself 
to  the  mind  of  Petrie,  but  he  put  them 
behind  him  and  pressed  on  to  the  accumu- 
lation of  facts. 

As  we  have  said,  two  lines  of  investigation 
were  followed  by  Petrie.  In  the  first  he 
deals  with  the  monuments  themselves.  The 
Irish  Round  Tower,  singular  as  it  is  in  its 
rotund  form,  is  one  of  the  stone  monuments 
of  Ireland.  What,  then,  was  its  relation 
to  other  monuments  of  stone  in  Ireland  ? 


116       A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

The  answer  to  this  question  led  Petrie  to 
open  up  the  subject  of  Ecclesiastical 
Architecture,  and  as  a  corollary  to  touch 
upon  the  stone  monuments  of  Celtic 
antiquity.  For  the  sake  of  the  general 
reader  we  may  briefly  give  an  outline  of 
the  sequence  of  stone  monuments  (i.e., 
standing  structures)  in  Ireland.  The 
earliest  standing  structure  belongs  to  the 
Polished  Stone  Age  (which  extends  in 
Ireland  up  to  about  1800  B.C.).  A  typical 
example  is  the  dolmen — popularly  known 
as  a  cromlech — consisting  of  four  or  more 
standing  stones  capped  by  a  covering 
stone.  To  the  transition  period  between  the 
Stone  Age  and  the  Bronze  in  Ireland  is  to 
be  ascribed  the  great  hill-tumuli,  such  as 
New  Grange,  Knowth,  and  Dowth,  on  the 
Boyne.  These  elaborate  chamber  tombs 
of  cruciform  shape  are  formed  in  the 
entrance  passage  of  rows  of  standing 
stones  capped  by  covering  slabs,  and  the 
terminating  dome-chamber  is  built  up  of  a 
series  of  stones,  placed  horizontally,  one 
projecting  slightly  beyond  the  other  till 
they  meet  at  the  summit  and  are  capped  by 
one  flat  slab.  In  no  case  is  there  any 
evidence  of  the  use  of  mortar. 

The  Bronze  Age  extends  in  Ireland  from 
about  1300  B.C.  to  about  500  B.C.  The 
frequent  practice  of  cremation  in  the  Bronze 


THE    ROUND    TOWERS  117 

Age,  in  the  Irish  area  at  least,  is  marked 
by  small  tombs,  consisting  generally  of 
four  side  slabs  capped  by  a  fifth,  and 
enclosing  a  cinerary  urn. 

Finally,  a  striking  series  of  monuments, 
to  be  found  especially  along  the  coast  from 
Kerry  to  the  Aran  Islands,  forms  an  im- 
portant feature  amidst  the  stone  struc- 
tures of  Ireland.  These  are  the  "  cashels  *' 
or  stone  "  Diins,"  such  as  Staigue  Fort,  or 
the  Diin  Mor  in  Dingle  peninsula,  or  Dun 
Aengus  in  Aran.  They  are  huge  circular 
structures,  built  of  uncemented  stones, 
and  unlike  the  previous  stone  structures, 
residences  for  the  living  and  not  for  the 
dead.  That  they  belong  to  the  Pagan 
period  there  is  no  doubt,  but  their  particular 
age  is  still  uncertain,  though  it  is  possible 
that  they  are  to  be  ascribed  to  the 
Bronze  Age.  As  we  have  seen,  in  dealing 
with  Tara  Petrie  was  dealing  with  a 
monument  of  the  Iron  Age,  or  at  least 
with  its  history  in  the  Iron  Age  and  Chris- 
tian era  more  particularly. 

This  brings  us  to  the  introduction  of 
Christianity,  and  with  it  the  introduction 
into  Ireland  of  a  new  class  of  building.  The 
following  pregnant  passage  suggests  the 
comprehensiveness  of  Petrie' s  outlook. 
Having  given  the  text  and  translation,  by 
0*Donovan,    of  the   famous   tract   SencAf 


118       A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

HA  ^eLec  or  "History  of  the  Cemeteries,** 
from  the  Leabhar  na  h-Uidhre,  he  continues  : 
"  The  preceding  document  will,  I  think,  be 
sufficient  to  satisfy  all  rational  inquirers 
of  the  visionary  character  of  the  hypo- 
thesis of  the  Round  Towers  having  been 
erected  as  places  of  sepulture,  at  least  in 
pagan  times  ;  for,  though  it  does  not  throw 
any  light  on  the  character  of  the  monu- 
ments in  use  preceding  Christianity,  it 
refers  us  distinctly  to  their  principal 
localities,  in  many  of  which  we  may  still 
examine  the  monuments  themselves.  Our 
ancient  manuscripts,  in  like  manner,  ac- 
quaint us  with  the  localities  of  the  prin- 
cipal battle-fields  in  Ireland,  and  with  the 
particular  monuments  of  the  most  dis- 
tinguished kings  and  warriors,  from  the 
earliest  periods  to  the  establishment  of 
Christianity  in  the  country ;  and  in  most 
of  these  localities  the  monuments  still 
remain.  But  do  we  in  any  of  those  places 
discover  a  Round  Tower,  or  the  vestige  of 
one  ?  Most  assuredly  not,  nor  any  monu- 
ment having  a  characteristic  in  common 
with  one.  We  find  the  stone  cam  and  the 
green  mound  with  their  sepulchral  cham- 
bers within  them,  and  their  monumental 
character  indicated  by  the  upright  stones, 
sometimes  single — like  the  stele  of  the 
Greeks — and   sometimes   forming  a  circle, 


THE  ROUND   TOWERS  119 

or  concentric  circles.  We  find  the  giants' 
graves  or  beds,  as  they  are  called  by  the 
Irish,  the  cromlechs,  and  Druids'  altars 
of  speculative  antiquaries.  And  when  we 
explore  any  of  these  monuments  we  find, 
according  to  their  age,  either  the  rude 
unglazed  sepulchral  urn  of  baked  clay,  and 
occasionally  of  stone,  containing  bones 
more  or  less  calcined,  or  unbumed  skele- 
tons, or  occasionally  both,  in  the  same 
sepulchre.  We  also  find  very  frequently 
weapons  of  stone  or  metal ;  and,  in  monu- 
ments of  importance,  indicating  the  dis- 
tinguished rank  of  the  persons  interred, 
ornaments  of  silver  and  gold.  And  that 
such  and  no  other  were  the  varieties  of 
sepulchral  monuments  in  use  in  Ireland 
in  pagan  times,  a  volume  of  historical 
evidences  from  our  ancient  manuscripts 
might  be  adduced  to  prove."* 

Petrie  then  quotes  from  the  Dinnsenchus 
and  the  Annals  of  Ulster,  to  show  the 
traditional  ascription  of  the  cemetery  of 
Brugh  na  Boinne,  and  the  monuments  at 
New  Grange,  Knowth,  and  Dowth  on  the 
Boyne,  to  the  Tuatha  de  Danaan  race  ;f 

*  Petrie,  Ecclesiastical  Architecture,  pp.  101,  102. 
(2nd  Ed.,  1845). 

f  In  Zeitschrift  filr  celtische  Philologie  and  in  the 
Journal  of  the  Society  of  Antiquaries,  Miss  Dobbs  has 
studied  the  relation  between  the  spiral  ornament, 
so   characteristic  at  New  Grange,  and  the  Tuatha  de 


120       A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

and  then  quotes  a  poem  from  Leabhar  na 
h-Uidhre,  describing  the  traditionally  later 
Milesian  cemetery  of  Rathcroghan.  Only 
the  professional  antiquary  will  fully 
recognise  how  brilliant,  in  the  light  of 
modern  archaeological  investigation,  is  the 
rSsumS  contained  in  the  above  passage, 
written  in  1845.  Ireland  may  well  be  proud 
of  Petrie  as  a  pioneer  archaeologist. 


CHAPTER   XIV 

FURTHER  ARCHAEOLOGICAL  RESEARCHES 

Having  thus  shown  that  not  a  particle  of 
evidence,  manuscript  or  otherwise,  could 
be  adduced  to  show  a  connexion  between 
the  Round  Towers  and  the  known  pagan 
stone  monuments  of  Ireland,  Petrie  pro- 
ceeded* to  the  establishment  of  his  thesis 
that  the  Round  Towers  are  members  of 
the  early  ecclesiastical  and  Christian  stone 
edifices  in  Ireland.  Here,  again,  his  dual 
method  came  into  play.     He  appealed  to 

Danaan.  Her  work  goes  to  show  that  the  localities 
associated  in  Irish  tales  with  the  Taatha  de  Danaan 
race  are  those  in  which  the  Bronze  Age  spiral  is 
found.  The  method  she  is  following  is  an  extension 
of  that  of  Petrie. 

*  Petrie,  Ecclesiastical  Architecture,  p.  122  to  the  end. 
(2nd  Ed.  1845.) 


ARCH^OLOGICAL  RESEARCHES  12l 

(1)  the  monuments  themselves,  and  (2)  the 
manuscript  literature.  He  was  met  at  the 
outset  with  a  widespread  belief,  propa- 
gated by  Sir  James  Ware,  "  the  first  and 
most  judicious,"  to  quote  Petrie's  words, 
"  of  all  the  writers  who  have  treated  of  Irish 
antiquities,  and  whose  work  still  ranks  as 
our  text-book  for  information  on  such 
subjects,"*  namely,  that  the  Irish  did 
not  begin  to  build  with  stone  and  mortar 
until  the  twelfth  century.f  Now,  the 
Round  Towers  are  built  with  stone  and 
mortar;  it  would  therefore  follow,  if 
Ware's  theory  were  true,  that  either 
they  formed  isolated  and  exceptional 
examples  of  building  with  mortar  and 
cement,  or  that  they  were  erected  in  or  after 
the  twelfth  century.  Petrie  had  already 
shown  that  in  no  known  pagan  stone 
structure  in  Ireland  was  there  evidence  of 
the  use  of  lime  cement.  It  remained  for 
him  now  to  show  that  there  was  evidence 
of  its  use  from  the  first  introduction  of 
Christianity,  and  therefore  previous  to  the 
twelfth  century.  This  led  him  to  an  ex- 
amination of  ecclesiastical  buildings  from 


*  Since  Petrie's  time  modern  research  has  much 
reduced  the  value  of  Ware's  and  Ussher's  works  as  in 
any  sense  authorities. 

t  This  opinion  was  held  also  by  Sir  Wm.  Petty,  Dr. 
Molyneux,  Dr.  Ledwich  and  others. 


122       A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

the  fifth  century  to  the  twelfth  century, 
and  thus  gave  rise  to  his  work  on  the  Eccle- 
siastical Architecture  of  Ireland.  It  would 
be  impossible  to  give  here  anything  like 
an  adequate  account  of  the  mass  of  detailed 
material  which  he  has  gathered  into  his 
book.  We  must  be  content  with  indicating 
his  main  line  of  work.  His  first  care  was, 
with  the  aid  of  O'Donovan  and  O'Curry, 
to  establish  the  authenticity  of  the  refer- 
ences in  Irish  manuscript  literature  to  the 
erection  or  destruction  of  Irish  ecclesi- 
astical buildings. 

The  terminology  was  first  elucidated — 
terms  like  Domnach,  damliac,  tempull, 
eclais,  regies,  baslic,  derteach,  etc.,  were 
assigned  a  definite  meaning,  and  their 
particular  value  established.  Then  the 
transition  from  the  uncemented  stone 
structures  of  the  pagan  period  to  the 
cemented  buildings  of  the  Christian  period 
was  established.  "  I  have  also  shown," 
he  says,  "  in  that  Essay,*  that  the  earlier 
colonists  in  the  country,  the  Firbolg  and 
Tuatha  de  Danaan  tribes,  which  our  his- 
torians bring  hither  from  Greece  at  a  very 
remote  period,  were  accustomed  to  build 
not  only  their  fortresses,  but  even  their 
dome-roofed  houses  and  sepulchres,  of 
stone  without    cement,   and  in  the  style 

*  Ancient  Military  Architecture. 


ARCHAEOLOGICAL  RESEARCHES  123 

now  usually  called  Cyclopean  and  Pelasgic. 
I  have  also  shown  that  this  custom,  as 
applied  to  their  forts  and  houses,  was  con- 
tinued in  those  parts  of  Ireland  in  which 
those  ancient  settlers  remained,  even  after 
the  introduction  of  Christianity,  and,  as 
I  shall  presently  show,  was  adopted  by 
the  Christians  in  their  religious  structures. 
As  characteristic  examples  of  these  ancient 
religious  structures,  still  remaining  in  suffi- 
cient preservation  to  show  us  perfectly 
what  they  had  been  in  their  original  state, 
I  may  point  to  the  monastic  establishment 
of  St.  Molaise,  on  Inishmurry,  in  the  bay 
of  Sligo,  erected  in  the  sixth  century ;  to 
that  of  St.  Brendan,  on  Inishglory,  off  the 
coast  of  Erris,  in  the  county  of  Mayo, 
erected  in  the  beginning  of  the  same  cen- 
tury ;  and  to  that  of  St.  Fechin,  on  Ard- 
Oilean,  or  High  Island,  off  the  coast  of 
Connemara,  in  the  county  of  Gal  way, 
erected  in  the  seventh  century.  In  all 
these  establishments  the  churches  alone, 
which  are  of  the  simplest  construction,  are 
built  of  lime  cement.  The  houses  or  cells, 
erected  for  the  use  of  the  abbots  and 
monks,  are  of  a  circular  or  oval  form, 
having  dome  roofs,  constructed,  like  those  of 
the  ancient  Greek  and  Irish  sepulchres, 
without  a  knowledge  of  the  principle  of  the 
arch,  and  without  the  use  of  cement ;  and 


124       A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

the  whole  are  encompassed  by  a  broad 
wall  composed  of  stones  of  great  size, 
without  cement  of  any  kind." 

Petrie  then  traces  the  evolution  of  the 
perfect  Irish  Romanesque  church,  such  as 
Cormac's  Chapel,  Rock  of  Cashel,  from 
these  early  churches  built  with  stone  and 
lime  cement,  such  as  St.  Cianan's  Church 
of  Daimhliag,  now  Duleek  in  Meath,  which 
he  considers  one  of  the  first  buildings  of 
stone  and  lime  cement  erected  in  Ireland. 
He  also  devotes  separate  notices  to  Orato- 
ries, Belfries  (Round  Towers),  Houses, 
Erdamhs,  Kitchens,  and  Cashels.  In  deal- 
ing with  the  evolution  of  the  early  Irish 
churches,  Petrie  set  himself  to  establish 
certain  criteria.  His  criteria  in  the  main 
were  based  on  the  size  of  the  building,  the 
Cyclopean  or  non-cyclopean  character  of 
the  stone-work,  and  the  use  of  lime  cement, 
the  character  of  the  roof,  door,  and  win- 
dows, the  introduction  of  the  principle  of 
the  arch,  the  introduction  of  the  chancel 
arch,  and  finally  the  use  of  ornamentation. 
For  example,  with  delicate  discrimination 
he  marks  the  transition  from  the  doorways 
with  inclined  sides  and  horizontal  lintel, 
as  in  Gallerus  Oratory  in  Kerry,  to  those 
with  inclined  sides  and  arched  lintel,  as  in 
the  church  of  Clooncagh,  County  Limerick  ; 
or,   again,    he  discriminates   between   the 


ARCHAEOLOGICAL  RESEARCHES  125 

horizontal-headed,    triangular-headed,  and 
arched-headed  windows.    The  beginnings  of 
moulding  on  doors  and  windows  and  the 
variety  of  splaying  in  the  latter  are  noted. 
Finally,  the  identity  between  the  famous 
Celtic  ornamentation    as   found  in  manu- 
script and  metal  work   and  that  on  Irish 
stone  work  is  noticed.     The  treatment  of 
ornamental  detail  in  the  exquisite  drawings 
with  which  his  work  is  illustrated   shows 
Petrie's   singular   accuracy   and   conscien- 
tiousness at  their  best.    It  has  been  reserved 
for  later  workers  to  develop  this  line  of  in- 
vestigation.   He  insists  on  the  Irish  char- 
acter (not  necessarily,  of  course,  the  purely 
Irish  origin)  of  the  chevron,  step-pattern, 
triquetra    and    interlaced    ornaments,    and 
points  out  their  identity  with  the  orna- 
mentation in  early  Irish  manuscripts,  such 
as   the   Book    of  Kells,     He   disposes    of 
Ledwich*s   attempt   to   prove   that   orna- 
ments such  as  the  triquetra  are  runic  sym- 
bols.   His  acuteness  of  observation  is  well 
exemplified  in  the  following   remarks  on 
the  ornamentation  on  the  tombstones  of 
Flanncadh,    Abbot    of    Clonmacnoise    (oh, 
circa   1002),    and   of   Suibne   Mac   Mailae 
h-Umai,*  of  Clonmacnoise  {oh,  circa  890) : 
"  Another  and  more  common  ornament  on 
our  inscribed  tombstones  anterior  to  the 

♦  Vide  supra. 


126        A    GROUP    OF    NATION -BUILDERS 

twelfth  century,  and  which  is  equally 
common  in  our  most  ancient  ecclesiastical 
manuscripts  of  the  earliest  date,  is  that 
boss-shaped  figure  formed  of  radiating 
eccentric  lines,  merging  into  one  another 
as  they  approach  the  margin,  and  leaving 
between  them  pear-shaped  spaces,  generally 
three  in  number,  but  sometimes  two  or 
four,  or  even  a  greater  number.  This 
ornament  is  usually  found  with  in  a  circle, 
which  forms  the  centre  of  a  cross  carved 
on  such  monumental  stones,  and,  like  the 
triquetra,  may  possibly  be  symbolic  of  the 
Trinity."*  This  is,  as  we  now  know,  the 
characteristic  pagan  La  T^ne  spiral  or 
trumpet  pattern,  which  survived  in  Irish 
ornament  down  to  about  the  beginning 
of  the  twelfth  century.  By  his  analysis  of 
Irish  ornament  Petrie  prepared  the  way 
for  the  solution  of  the  problems  as  to  its 
origin.  We  can  only  here  refer  our  readers 
to  modem  works  on  Comparative  Archae- 
ology for  an  account  of  the  present  state 
of  knowledge  in  this  regard.  Let  us  merely 
say  that  here  again  Petrie  showed  himself 
a  brilliant  pioneer.  Having  described  the 
evolution  of  the  Irish  Romanesque  church 
from  the  early  Irish  stone  churches  of  the 
fifth     and     sixth     centuries,     he     treats 

*  Ecclesiastical     Architecture,  pages  326,  327.     Vide 
supra. 


ARCH^OLOGICAL   RESEARCHES  127 

along  similar  lines  of  the  Oratories, 
Erdamhs,  Kitchens,  and  Cashels.  He 
also  devotes  a  special  section  to  the  Round 
Towers.  Briefly,  he  shows  that,  apart  from 
their  rounded  and  tapering  figure,  they 
possess  the  same  characteristics  as  the 
line  of  churches  stretching  from  the  fifth 
or  sixth  centuries  to  the  twelfth  century. 
They  are  the  same  in  their  stone-work, 
in  their  use  of  lime  cement,  in  their  char- 
acteristic doors  and  windows,  in  their  orna- 
mentation, and,  finally,  he  notes,  their  almost 
universal  association  with  churches  of  a 
similar  architectural  character.  This  over- 
whelming evidence  is  backed  up  by  con- 
tinuous extracts  from  the  manuscript 
literature  dealing  with  their  erection  or 
burning,  or  with  the  erection  or  burning 
of  the  churches  with  which  they  were 
associated. 

In  1834  Petrie  received  a  Gold  Medal  from 
the  Royal  Irish  Academy  for  his  work 
on  the  Military  and  Sepulchral  Architec- 
ture of  Ireland.  It  remains  unre vised  and 
unpublished  in  manuscript  on  the  shelves 
of  the  Academy.  Exigency  of  space  com- 
pels us  to  deal  briefly  with  it  in  this  essay. 
It  contains  a  survey  of  the  proto-historic 
pagan  remains  of  Ireland ;  and  in  it  Petrie 
adopts  practically  the  same  line  of  scientific 
criticism  as  in  his  Essay  on  Ecclesiastical 


128        A    GROUP    OF    NATION -BUILDERS 

Architecture.  Let  us  again  point  out  that 
in  Ireland  a  Stone  Age  is  followed  by  a 
Bronze  Age,  and  the  Bronze  Age  by  the 
Iron  Age,  passing  into  the  Christian  Era. 

Ireland  is  studded  with  monuments  of 
all  three  ages.  Monuments  or  remains  of 
all  three  periods  and,  indeed,  of  the  Chris- 
tian period  may  be  found  in  close  proxi- 
mity to  one  another.  The  science  of  Com- 
parative Archaeology  in  our  own  day  has 
succeeded  in  establishing  criteria  by  which 
to  separate  this  accumulation  of  monu- 
ments and  remains  into  regular  strata. 
But  even  now  there  are  numbers  of  prob- 
lems that  await  solution.  Take,  for 
instance,  those  great  stone  forts  or  Buns 
such  as  Bun  Aengus  in  Aran  ;  these  are  still 
shrouded  in  mystery,  though  it  may  yet  be 
shown  that  they  are  monuments  of  the 
Bronze  Age.* 

It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at,  therefore, 
that  Petrie  did  not  see  clearly  through  the 
entanglement  of  problems  that  confronted 
him  in  connexion  with  the  pagan  anti- 
quities of  Ireland.  The  marvel  is  that  he 
entered  so  frequently  on  the  right  path  to 
a  correct  solution.  His  destructive  work 
was  perfect.  He  swept  away  theories, 
ridiculous  from  a  scientific  point  of  view, 

*  See  article  (to  be  continued)  by  Prof.  R.  A.  S. 
Macalister,  in  Irish  Ecclesiastical  Record,  April,  1913. 


ARCH^OLOGICAL  RESEARCHES  129 

as  to  the  Danish  origin  of  these  remains. 
His  line  of  research  tended  more  and  more 
to  estabHsh  the  vaUdity  of  native  manu- 
script tradition  as  to  their  antiquity  ;  and 
the  most  modern  research  work  is  on  the 
way  to  prove  that  these  traditions  can  no 
longer  be  brushed  aside  as  a  mass  of  abso- 
lutely unfounded  legend.  In  the  light  of 
modem  archaeology  terms  such  as  Firbolg, 
Tuatha  de  Danaan,  and  Milesian  are 
receiving  a  new  interpretation,  and  the 
dawn  of  Petrie's  research  is  opening 
into  the  light  of  day.  All  honour,  then, 
to  Petrie  as  a  pioneer !  In  the  Stone  Age 
he  recognised  the  sepulchral  character  of 
the  dolmens  (or,  as  they  are  popularly  called, 
cromlechs),  and  disposed  of  the  theory 
that  they  were  Druids'  altars.  In  the  great 
Bronze  Age  tumuli,  or  tombs,  of  New 
Grange,  Knowth,  and  Dowth,  on  the  Boyne, 
he  noted  their  characteristic  structure  and 
ornament  and  their  similarity  to  the  so- 
called  Treasury  of  Atreus  at  Mycenae, 
which  he  calls  correctly  "  a  tumulus  of 
immense  size  "  ;  whilst  he  also  noted  the 
similarity  between  Irish  bronze  ornament 
and  bronze  weapons  and  those  of  "  Greece." 
He,  naturally,  drew  the  conclusion  that 
here  he  had  evidence  of  the  truth  of  the 
native  tradition  that  these  monuments 
and  weapons  were  the  work  of  Greek  in- 
10 


130       A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

vaders.  In  his  time  the  fallacy  of  identi- 
fying a  form  of  ornament  or  a  particular 
type  of  antiquarian  remains  with  race 
was  quite  natural.  The  truth  is  that  the 
Bronze  Age  ornament,  for  example,  came 
to  Ireland  through  commerce  and  not 
through  invasion.  This  does  not  prevent 
the  native  tradition  as  to  the  "  Greek " 
origin  of  the  Bronze  Age  peoples  bearing 
a  true  interpretation.  What  that  inter- 
pretation may  be  we  need  not  enter  into 
here.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  the  growth 
of  allied  sciences,  such  as  Ethnology, 
Anthropology  and  Comparative  Philology, 
has  in  our  day  helped  us  to  travel  with 
surer  step  through  the  entangled  laby- 
rinths due  to  the  crossings  of  race,  of 
language,  and  of  antiquarian  forms.  It  is 
only  quite  recently  that  the  fundamental 
fallacy  of  identifying  race  with  language 
has  been  removed  from  our  Historical 
Grammars.  In  associating,  as  to  age,  the 
great  cathairs  of  the  West,  such  as  Dun 
Aengus,  with  the  Bronze  Age  tumuli, 
Petrie  seems  again  to  have  been  in  the 
right  track,  though,  as  we  have  said,  the 
Bronze  Age  origin  of  these  cathairs  is  not 
yet  established.  In  similar  fashion  he 
dealt  with  the  remains  at  Carrowmore  and 
Clover  Hill,  Sligo,  and  on  the  battle-field 
of    Moytura,    where    tradition    says    the 


ARCH^OLOGICAL  RESEARCHES  131 

Firbolg  were  defeated  by  the  Tuatha  de 
Danaan.*  The  great  stone  circles  he 
considered  to  be  of  sepulchral  origin.  Pro- 
fessor Macalister  believes  them  to  have 
been  temples,  but  does  not  deny  their 
association  with  a  place  of  sepulture,t  and 
thinks  them  in  all  probability  of  the 
Bronze  Age.  Considering  its  unfinished  and 
unrevised  state  and  the  earliness  of  its 
composition,  Petrie's  Essay  on  Military  and 
Sepulchral  Architecture  gives  us  an  earnest 
of  what  his  maturer  work  would  have  been. 
As  Dr.  Stokes  says  :  "  It  is  plain  that  at 
this  time  [i.e.,  1834]  Petrie  had  not  gone 
into  the  entire  subject  of  Ancient  Irish 
sepulture.  He  had  done  much  in  showing 
the  true  nature  of  the  '  cromlech,'  or  so- 
called  Druidic  altars,  and  has  brought  the 
light  of  history  to  bear,  not  on  them  alone, 
but  on  the  four  principal  monuments  of 
the  Boyne,  even  to  their  very  identifica- 
tion ;  and  from  what  he  has  done  in  this 
Essay,  written  in  1834,  some  estimate 
may  be  made  of  what  he  would  afterwards 
have  accomplished  had  opportunity  been 
afforded  to  him. "J 


*  Vide  articles  by  Miss  Dobbs  referred  to  supra. 
t  Irish  Ecclesiastical  Record,  April,  1913 :  "  Footprints 
of  History  in  Ireland,"  p.  381. 
X  stokes'  Life  of  Petrie,  p.  237. 


CHAPTER   XV 

THE  ANCIENT  MUSIC  OF  IRELAND 

As  we  have  seen,  Petrie,  in  his  early  years, 
was  an  artist.  In  later  years  he  devoted 
himself  to  antiquarian  work,  and  to  anti- 
quarian illustrations  in  which  his  artistic 
powers  found  a  vent.  Later,  with  the 
exception  of  a  few  paintings,  he  kept  rigidly 
along  the  path  of  antiquarian  investiga- 
tion. His  artistic  sense  found  scope  for 
its  exercise,  however,  in  his  descriptions 
of  those  relics  of  Christian  culture  which 
made  Ireland  famous  for  stone  and  metal 
work  and  manuscript  illumination  from 
the  sixth  to  the  twelfth  centuries.  He 
lays  stress  upon  the  rise  of  the  Fine  Arts  in 
Ireland  under  the  fostering  care  of  the 
Christian  Church,  and  we  possess  his  charm- 
ing and  accurate  descriptions  of  the  great 
classes  of  artistic  work  which  add  to  the 
glory  of  the  Church  in  Ireland.  That 
Church  is  famous  for  its  splendid  faith  and 
its  wonderful  missionary  spirit.  It  is  also 
famous  for  its  fine  artistic  work  from  the 
sixth  to  the  twelfth  centuries.  Amidst  the 
persecutions  of  later  years  it  displayed  its 
heroic  qualities  of  endurance  and  its  living 

132 


THE  ANCIENT  MUSIC  OF  IRELAND     133 

faith,  but  the  decline  of  its  artistic  powers 
is  to  be  ascribed  to  the  unfavourable  cir- 
cumstances under  which  it  was  forced  to 
live. 

Petrie  was  the  first  to  bring  under  the 
notice  of  artistic  Europe  the  beauty  of  our 
illuminated  manuscripts,  of  our  croziers 
and  crosses  and  shrines,  of  our  stone 
crosses  and  sepulchral  monuments.  He 
tried  to  awaken  popular  interest  in  the 
subject  in  a  series  of  papers  contributed 
to  the  Dublin  Penny  Journal,  In  addition 
he  wrote  accurate  descriptions  of  the  chief 
antiquities  of  the  Christian  period  acquired 
by  the  Museum  of  the  Royal  Irish 
Academy,  amongst  the  most  notable  being 
the  Domnach  Airgid,  the  Gospels  of  St. 
Molaise,  the  ancient  consecrated  Bells  of 
Ireland,  such  as  the  Bell  of  St.  Patrick, 
the  Cross  of  Cong,  the  Shrine  of  St. 
Manchan,  the  Fiacal  Padraig,  the  Miosach 
of  St.  Columba,  and  the  Tara  Brooch. 
With  all  the  keen  perception  of  the  artist 
he  emphasized  those  evidences  of  refined 
and  spiritual  delicacy  of  drawing,  of  sense 
for  balance  and  freedom,  which  make  Irish 
line  ornamentation — as  in  the  Book  of 
Kells,  or  on  the  Ardagh  Chalice — ^the  finest 
the  world  has  ever  seen. 

The  charm  of  social  intercourse  between 
Petrie,  O'Donovan,  and  O' Curry  was  en- 
10* 


134  A   GROUP   OF   NATION-BUILDERS 

hanced  by  their  common  love  of  Irish 
Music.  O' Curry  devoted  a  notable  sec- 
tion of  his  Lectures  on  the  Manners  and 
Customs  of  the  Ancient  Irish  to  "  Music 
and  Musical  Instruments  in  Ancient  Erin.'* 
When  but  seventeen  years  of  age,  Petrie 
gave  Tom  Moore  some  Irish  airs.  In  a 
journal  of  a  tour  in  Wicklow  in  1808,  we 
find  the  following  entry  :  "  Got  one  Peter 
Power  to  spend  the  evening  with  me, 
having  heard  that  he  had  many  Irish  airs ; 
got  but  two  from  him."  Petrie  viewed 
Irish  music  from  two  points  of  view  :  as  an 
antiquary  he  saw  in  the  folk-music  of 
Ireland  another  evidence  of  the  early  and 
traditional  culture  of  the  Irish  race  ;  and  as 
a  man  of  artistic  feeling  he  saw  in  it  a 
perennial  source  of  pleasure.  His  first 
essay  on  Irish  Music  appeared  in  the 
Dublin  Examiner  of  the  year  1816. 

To  Bunting's  Ancient  Music  of  Ireland, 
he  contributed  a  notice  on  the  ancient 
harp  in  Trinity  College,  known  as  Brian 
Boroimhe's  Harp.  "  In  December,  1851,  a 
society  for  the  preservation  and  publica- 
tion of  the  melodies  of  Ireland  was  founded 
with  Petrie  as  President.  One  volume, 
consisting  entirely  of  airs  collected  by 
Petrie,  appeared  under  the  superintendence 
of  this  society  in  1855.  On  the  subject  of 
his  collection  he  corresponded  with  Thomas 


THE  ANCIENT  MUSIC  OF  IRELAND      135 

Moore,      MacDowell,      Chappell,      Eugene 
O' Curry,  J.  P.  Joyce  and  others."* 

Unlike  Moore  and  Stephenson,  he  made 
no  attempt  at  modernising  his  collec- 
tion :  he  gives  us  plough  tunes,  spinning 
tunes,  smiths'  tunes,  millers'  and  carters' 
songs,  luUabys,  dance  airs,  and  others, 
just  as  they  have  come  down  the  centuries. 
He  was  not  in  a  position  to  discuss  the 
apparently  thorny  subject  of  the  origin 
of  the  Irish  scale  ;  but  he  knew  that  in  Irish 
Music  he  was  dealing  with  something  which 
was   both  primitive  and  beautiful. 

In  1857,  on  the  occasion  of  a  meeting  of 
the  British  Association  at  Dublin,  the 
Ethnological  Section  organised  a  visit  to 
the  Aran  Islands.  Amongst  the  Irish 
visitors  were  Petrie,  O'Curry,  O'Donovan, 
F.  W.  Burton,  Samuel  Ferguson,  Whitley 
Stokes,  Dr.  Wm.  Stokes,  Sir  Wm.  Wilde, 
Haverty  and  others.  And  it  was  this  occasion 
which  gave  rise  to  the  following  pen-picture 
by  Dr.  William  Stokes  of  the  enthusiasm 
of  Petrie  and  O'Curry  for  Irish  Music : 
"  To  this  cottage  [in  the  little  village  of 
Kilronan],  when  evening  fell,  Petrie  with 
his  manuscript  book  and  violin,  and  always 
accompanied  by  his  friend  O'Curry,  used 
to    proceed.      Nothing    could    exceed    the 

*  stokes'  Life  of  Petrie,  p.  340j 


136       A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

strange  picturesqueness  of  the  scenes  which 
night  after  night  were  thus  presented.  On 
approaching  the  house,  always  lighted  up 
by  a  blazing  turf  fire,  it  was  seen  sur- 
rounded by  the  islanders,  whilst  its  interior 
was  crowded  with  figures,  the  rich  colours 
of  whose  dresses,  heightened  by  the  fire- 
light, showed  with  a  strange  vividness  and 
variety,  while  their  fine  countenances  were 
all  animated  with  curiosity  and  pleasure. 
It  would  have  required  a  Rembrandt  to 
paint  the  scene.  The  minstrel — some- 
times an  old  woman,  sometimes  a  beauti- 
ful girl  or  a  young  man — was  seated  on  a 
low  stool  in  the  chimney-comer,  while 
chairs  for  Petrie  and  O' Curry  were  placed 
opposite ;  the  rest  of  the  crowded  audience 
remained  standing.  The  song  having  been 
given,  O' Curry  wrote  the  Irish  words,  when 
Petrie's  work  began.  The  singer  recom- 
menced, stopping  at  a  signal  from  him  at 
every  two  or  three  bars  of  the  melody  to 
permit  the  writing  of  the  notes,  and  often 
repeating  the  passage  until  it  was  correctly 
taken  down,  and  then  going  on  with  the 
melody,  exactly  from  the  point  where  the 
singing  was  interrupted.  The  entire  air 
being  at  last  obtained,  the  singer — a  second 
time — ^was  called  to  give  the  song  con- 
tinuously, and  when  all  corrections  had 
been  made,  the  violin — an  instrument  of 


THE   ANCIENT  MUSIC   OF  IRELAND     137 

great  sweetness  and  power — ^was  produced, 
and  the  air  played,  as  Petrie  alone  could 
play  it,  and  often  repeated. 

**  Never  was  the  inherent  love  of  music 
among  the  Irish  people  more  shown  than  on 
this  occasion ;  they  listened  with  deep 
attention,  while  their  heartfelt  pleasure 
was  expressed  less  by  exclamations  than 
by  gestures ;  and  when  the  music  ceased, 
a  general  and  murmured  conversation,  in 
their  own  language,  took  place,  which 
would  continue  until  the  next  song  was 
commenced."* 

It  is  a  pity  that  the  clever  pencil  of  Burton 
did  not  sketch  for  us  the  group  of  dis- 
tinguished scholars  who  met  in  Aran  in 
1857.  It  would  stand  as  a  symbol  of  the 
undying  spirit  of  Irish  intellectual  life,  and 
to  that  there  could  be  no  more  fitting 
background  than  this  rock-bound  island 
home  of  the  past  ages  of  Celtic  civilisation. 

Petrie  loved  every  inch  of  Irish  ground. 
With  the  exception  of  a  few  visits  to 
England  and  to  Scotland,  his  whole  life 
was  spent  in  Ireland  and  for  Ireland. 
His  vitality  to  the  end  was  astonishing. 
He  was  an  old  man  of  seventy  years 
on  the  occasion  of  his  next  and  last 
visit    to  the  West    in    1859,    and    Stokes, 

*  stokes'  Life  of  Petrie,  pp.  317,  318. 


138       A    GROUP    OF   NATION-BUILDERS 

who  was  with  him  at  the  time,  has 
left  on  record  this  evidence  of  his 
joyous  spirit :  "  In  the  district  of  Burren 
[County  Clare] — the  Arabia  Petraea  of 
Ireland — so  rich  in  the  remains  of  Pagan 
and  early  Christian  times,  and  with  its 
invigorating  air  and  singular  rock  scenery, 
his  spirits  became  almost  boyish.  On 
leaving  Ballyvaughan  the  party  had  to 
meet  the  train  at  Oranmore  ;  the  day  was 
showery,  and  he  had  remained  within 
doors ;  but  even  when  the  last  moment 
for  departure  had  arrived,  he  was  found 
dancing  round  the  room  to  his  own  spirit- 
stirring  music,  while  Irish  planxties, 
Spanish  fandangos  and  boleros  fell  in 
showers  from  his  violin,  and  not  till  the 
very  last  moment  could  he  be  got  to 
mount  the  car." 

Great  workers  must,  at  some  time  or 
other,  pay  the  penalty  of  originality.  The 
crowd  cannot  follow  them  up  the  heights, 
and  hence  they  will  suffer  from  the  lone- 
liness of  isolation  and  neglect.  In  O' Curry 
and  O'Donovan  he  had  fellow-workers  in 
kindred  subjects ;  they  too  were  climbing 
the  heights,  but  along  somewhat  different 
paths.  In  Lord  Adare  and  Dr.  William 
Stokes  he  had  the  kindest  of  friends  and 
sympathisers,  and  in  his  daughters  he 
found  a  wealth  of  filial  affection  and  love. 


THE    ANCIENT    MUSIC    OF    IRELAND      139 

But  the  strain  of  years  of  work  began  to 
tell  upon  the  old  man,  as  it  did  on  O' Curry 
and  O' Donovan,  and  with  it  came  the 
temptation  to  regret :  "  Can  you  wonder,'* 
he  says,  "  if  I  should  regret  that  I  ever 
abandoned  the  practice  of  that  delightful 
art  [Painting],  which  would  have  secured 
me  distinction,  competence,  and  peace, 
and  probably  length  of  years,  to  do  things 
that  I  thought  of  more  value  to  the  world  ? 
And  yet  I  do  not  regret  it.  But  I  suffer ; 
and  it  may  deprive  my  poor  girls  of  a  life 
which  is,  at  least,  of  great  value  to  them."* 
It  was  a  cry  of  weakness ;  but  he  soon 
regained  his  old  self.  He  loved  the  Irish 
people  and  the  freedom  of  Irish  Art,  and 
one  of  his  last  public  acts  was  to  resign 
the  Presidency  of  the  Royal  Hibernian 
Academy  as  a  protest  against  the  with- 
drawal of  the  evening  exhibitions  for 
working-men,  and  against  the  new  Charter 
which  gave  the  Government  a  veto  in  all 
elections  of  members  and  nominees  on 
committee.  To  the  end  the  Celtic  lands 
exercised  a  wondrous  fascination  over  him, 
and  in  the  autumn  of  the  year  1864,  Petrie, 
now  seventy-five  years  of  age,  paid  his 
first  and  last  visit  to  the  home  of  St. 
Columba,  Glencolumbkille,  in  the  County  of 

*  stokes'  Life  of  Petrie,  p.  374. 


140  A    GROUP    OF    NATION-BUILDERS 

Donegal.  On  his  return  to  Dublin  he 
devoted  himself  to  the  preparation  of  a 
catalogue  of  his  beloved  antiquities,  and 
in  the  midst  of  his  work  Death  called 
him  on  the  17th  January,  1866.  He  was 
buried  in  Mount  Jerome  Cemetery,  Dublin. 
He  has  found,  let  us  hope,  something 
greater  than  the  distinction,  competence, 
and  peace,  which,  in  a  moment  of  regret,  he 
had  sighed  for  ;  he  has  found  a  place  in 
the  loving  memory  of  the  Irish  People. 


THE    END 


Printed  by  BROWNE  and  Nolan,  Limited,  Dublin. 


Date  Due 


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